


headrush

by princesskay



Category: Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Choking, Hand Jobs, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Phone Sex, Post-Canon, anger issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:41:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22530403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princesskay/pseuds/princesskay
Summary: A drunken phone call unveils a hidden aspect of Bill and Holden's relationship. Understanding what they both want from each other becomes a dark, winding path that grows more and more complicated as the disturbing case of three murdered young girls in Alabama unfolds.
Relationships: Holden Ford/Bill Tench
Comments: 49
Kudos: 174





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _“Finally, in a low whisper, he said, ‘I think I might be a terrible person.’ For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”_
> 
> _\- Miranda July, The First Bad Man_

Unlike the Omni, the Roadway Inn doesn’t have a fully-stocked hotel bar. There’s a Mini-Mart across the street that sells cigarettes and cheap whiskey next to the potato chips and chocolate bars. It’s a sad little establishment with two gas pumps and triple the amount of alcohol. Bill never thought he’d miss the Omni or Atlanta. Not until this very moment. 

For the second weekend in a row, he stands in the narrow aisle, squinting against the glare of the overhead light reflecting off the row of refrigerated drinking options lining the backside of the Mini-Mart. A few feet down, a pair of scraggly, homeless-looking men are fighting over whether to purchase vodka or tequila. Bill winces, and yanks the glass door open to retrieve the bottle of whiskey he’s been staring down for the last five minutes. 

He leaves the Mini-Mart with the bottle in a brown paper sack and a new pack of cigarettes clutched in his fist. Tucking the bottle beneath his jacket, he crosses the street to the motel where his current lodging is situated at the end of the squatted, red brick building. On the balcony above, a woman is leaning against the railing smoking a cigarette. She’s in a mini-skirt and tube-top, gaudy makeup on her face. Reminding himself that this arrangement is only temporary, Bill lets himself into his room, and leans against the door to push it shut. 

The tiny, rented room has a double bed with thin sheets, and a drab, yellow duvet. The television only works half of the time, and the AC unit runs like a fucking freight train in the middle of the night. He’d rather be anywhere than here, but he’d been forced to sit out this week’s interview on account of appointments. Social worker, psychiatrist … divorce lawyer. 

Exhaling a weary sigh, Bill crosses the room to the bed. He sets the whiskey and cigarettes on the nightstand while he strips down to his underwear, and turns on the TV. A news report stutters across the screen in jagged clips, the anchor’s voice echoing in staticy staccato as if from another universe. 

He drops down to the sheets, and twists open the whiskey bottle. Lighting a cigarette, he settles down against the pillow. It’s pathetic, really, but he can’t quite find the gumption to reach down into his gut for something more noble. Maybe tomorrow, after he’s drunk himself sick, and he’s on his knees in front of the toilet puking up his guts he’ll find the wherewithal to snap out of this pit of self-misery; but tonight, the whiskey tastes like distance, like relief, a brief escape from the reality of his situation. It’s the end of a long week, his wife has left him, his son’s future is hanging in the balance, and the bitter taste of Atlanta is yet to wash away under the burn of alcohol. He’s keen on getting justifiably wasted. 

Two hours later, when his head is swimming and his face feels numb, he realizes that he’d promised to call Holden to talk over the interview. Muttering a curse, Bill sets aside the bottle of whiskey, and reaches a slow hand to grab the telephone receiver. He’d left a sticky note on the nightstand with the hotel phone number scrawled on it. He dials with a wavering finger, focusing hard on the tiny numbers printed on the buttons. 

The phone rings three times before Holden answers. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, it’s me.” Bill says, sinking back against the sheets. “How’s Nebraska?” 

“Flat, boring.” Holden says, “The only thing interesting here is Jones.” 

Bill stifles a chuckle. “That good, huh? How did it go?” 

“Fine. There was a bit of hemming and hawing at the beginning, but he opened up towards the end.” 

“And Gregg?” 

Holden’s sigh rustles across the line. “You know I’d much rather have you in these interviews.” 

“If it’s any consolation, I’d rather be working too.” 

“I know.” Holden says, his voice softening. “Do you want to talk about it, or …?”

Bill closes his eyes. “Not really. Tell me about Jones.” 

“Okay.” Holden says, “It was interesting really. He claims that all of his kills were random and not pre-planned, but there’s an obvious pattern to the women he killed. All the same age range, hair color, even some of their personality traits matched according to the families.” 

Bill clutches the phone as the soft, fascinated lilt of Holden’s voice registers across the line, from miles away. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine the spark of excitement in the blue of Holden’s eyes, the pensive set of his lips, the concentrated furrow of his brow. There’s something soothing about the cadence of his voice. Bill thinks maybe because it’s familiar, or maybe because it has the gentle, honeyed quality people usually expect from a woman. 

“Bill?” 

Bill’s eyes jolt open when he realizes that he’d lost track of the conversation, and that Holden is asking him a question. 

“Hmm?” He grunts, shoving up against the pillows. 

“I was saying that he was a bit like Kemper in that regard.” Holden says, “When Jones talked about how the urge just came over him … what did Kemper call it?  _ A fantastic passion _ .” 

“Yeah, right.” 

There’s a pause across the line. Bill can hear the rustle of fabric, sheets maybe. 

“Are you okay?” Holden asks, softly. 

Bill clenches his jaw. His mouth tastes thick and dry with whiskey, but his throat knots harder at the simple, well-intentioned question. 

“Fine.” He manages, hearing his own voice emerge in a strangled tone that he barely recognizes. 

“You don’t sound fine.” Holden says. 

“I’m a little drunk to be honest.” Bill says, casting a narrowed glance at the half-empty whiskey bottle on the nightstand. “A little” is an understatement. 

“You’re at the hotel?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good.” Holden says, “Stay there, and sleep it off.” 

“You worried about me?” 

“A little, yes.” 

Bill feels a smile tug at his mouth despite the pain in his chest. “I’d tell you not to worry, but …” 

“But what?” 

“Nothing, it’s just …” Bill closes his eyes, feeling the words roll off his tongue untethered by whiskey. “It’s good to hear your voice.” 

There’s a pause across the line, and Bill can almost hear the weight of those words sinking into static. His pulse kicks up a notch, biological intuition reaching his bloodstream faster than his alcohol-soaked brain can catalogue. 

“Should I keep talking?” Holden asks. His voice is trembling just a bit, and Bill likes the sound of it. 

“Do you have the time?” Bill asks. 

“Yes, I’m at the hotel.” 

Bill swallows hard. Perhaps he’s imagining the suggestion in Holden’s voice, but it sounds like an invitation from far away, the distance between them like a stop gap against something stronger. 

“In bed?” He asks, the question jumping from his chest before he can stop it. 

Holden’s breath picks up against the receiver. “Yes.” 

_ What are you wearing?  _ Bill blinks against the thought, has the sense to swallow down that forward question. It’s a bit too obvious, and Holden might shut down if he said it. There’s a shallow throb radiating into his belly, triggered by emptiness, by loneliness, by drink and desperation - the last thing he wants right now is for Holden to hang up the phone. 

“What were you saying about Jones?” He asks instead. 

Holden clears his throat. “He, um … he said that the urge would just overcome him. He couldn’t stop it. The compulsion to choke and stab his victims was so strong that it eventually led to his arrest because of witnesses.” 

“I can’t believe he wasn’t caught sooner.” 

“He held it in check for four victims.” Holden says, “Finally, it became too much. He went into a spree.” 

“You can only hold back something that violently powerful for so long.” 

Holden pauses again. Bill wonders if his drunken brain is reading into the silences, but the tension feels palpable, like needles lining his spine. 

“What was fascinating was how he described the strangulation.” Holden says, his voice dropping to a scraped whisper. “He called it … intimate.” 

“Intimate?”

“Yes. He choked them from the front so he could look into their eyes while they died. He said it was better than sex.” 

“Christ, what a sick fuck. Could you imagine getting turned on by that?” 

“A lot of people get turned on by erotic asphyxiation. The choking part, I mean … not taking it to the point of killing someone.” 

Bill rolls over in bed to grab his cigarettes from the nightstand. He presses one to his mouth while cradling the phone to his ear. 

“Is that a yes?” He asks, focusing on plying his lighter open. 

He can hear Holden swallowing thickly. “Do I get turned on by the thought of being choked?” 

Bill frowns as nicotine seeps into his lungs. “I meant you doing the choking, but sure.” 

Holden clears his throat into the phone. “Do you?” 

“I haven’t really considered it. Maybe I should for the sake of studying Jones.” 

“A lot of these killers use strangulation to kill their victims.” Holden says, “It might be a fascinating study into their minds … to see what it feels like.” 

“And who are you going to get to choke you?” Bill asks, scoffing against the rising tempo of his heart. He can hear it echoing through his head, a loud, watery churning against his ears, a dull roar over the languid rush of whiskey and nicotine. 

“I would need someone with big, strong hands.” Holden murmurs, his voice a husky, illicit tone. 

Bill bites into his lower lip, and closes his eyes against the sudden wave of need hitting him in the chest. Whatever panic he might have felt at such a realization is slowed and muffled by drunkenness, and deep in his burning chest, he wants nothing more than for this sultry, dangerous conversation to continue twisting into uncharted territory. 

“Another man?” He asks, trying not to sound eager. 

“Well, most of these killers  _ are  _ men.” 

“But, it’s sexual. You would be … be okay with that?” 

“It would depend.” Holden says, drawing in a deep breath. “On who it was.” 

“So, you have someone in mind.” 

“Don’t you?” 

They both pause, breathing back and forth across the line in raspy inhales and exhales, each waiting for the other to say it first.

Bill takes a hard drag of his cigarette, keeping his eyes shut against the reality of the shitty motel room surrounding him. Holden’s voice sounds like a fantasy, a drunken, stupid dreamworld where this kind of talk isn’t as dangerous as it seems. It has been a long, hard week, and maybe he can indulge just a bit. 

Holden’s hesitation lasts just long enough for Bill to tumble into this ill-advised determination. Then he whispers, “If you were here right now, would you do it?” 

Bill clutches the phone tighter. All the heat of the whiskey feels like it’s pooled in his belly, sinking lower and lower between his thighs. He slips his eyelids open to glimpse the front of his boxers tenting slightly. Jesus Christ. 

“You want me to?” Bill’s voice struggles in a whisper from the back of his throat. He shifts uncomfortably against the sheets as his groin pinches, a heated jolt of arousal that disperses into his bloodstream. 

“Yes.” Holden murmurs, more of an exhaled whimper rather than an affirmation, like he’s confessing something worthy of punishment. 

“What if I do?” Bill asks, closing his eyes against the vivid image rising in the back of his mind of Holden lying trapped beneath him, his pale throat flushed beneath the clutch of Bill’s fist. “Then what?” 

Holden makes a strange little sound across the phone line, and Bill can hear the rustle of fabric. His eyes spring open, blood rushing hot to his cheeks.  _ Touching himself?  _

The very thought makes Bill’s own erection erupt into a vicious throb, his entire body lighting up with tingling arousal. He shoves the heel of his hand against the swollen lump, fighting back the need despite it’s full-blown evolution, it’s unavoidable desperation. The brusque touch achieves the opposite effect, and he finds his fingers wrapping around the throbbing girth through the thin barrier of his underwear. 

“Then …” Holden whispers, his voice strangled whisper. “...then, I do what I’m doing right now.” 

Bill’s fist tightens around the phone. He wishes it was Holden’s warm skin in his grasp rather than blunt plastic, wishes it was his throat, his wrists, his cock, any part of him Bill could get his hands on. 

“You’re … you’re doing it too, right?” Holden whispers, trepidation rippling beneath the heady need in his voice. 

Bill grunts an affirmation as his hand slips beneath the waistband of his boxers. Underneath the fabric, his skin radiates inflamed heat that he can feel from a distance. His fingertips seek through his pubic hair before finding the shaft arching rigidly away from his belly. His cock leaps against the brush of his fingers, aching with sudden, powerful need that’s been left ignored for far too long. He carefully wraps his fingers around it, biting back the whimpered cry building in the back of his throat. 

He can’t remember the last time he did this, can barely remember what this kind of demanding hunger feels like - but it’s hitting him now like a fist to the gut, and he can hardly breathe, can hardly think past the next second of throbbing need. 

“Fuck, I’m so hard.” Holden whimpers against the phone, his breath blasting static across the line. 

Bill swallows back a groan. “Jesus, Holden-”

Holden whines. “I wish you were here. I want your hands on me.” 

Bill’s hand strokes harder at his dick, half-painful friction burning across his skin.

“I want that, too.” He mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut to preserve the fantasy unfurling behind his eyelids. 

He can see it now. Holden underneath of him. His cock red and hard, leaking with need. His face flushed hot, his mouth open and panting in utter desperation. 

“Tell me what else you want.” Holden rasps. 

Bill swallows convulsively, his chest pounding. His fist squeezes around his cock at the base, holding back the need stampeding up through his belly. He wants this to last just a minute longer, just a few more glorious seconds. 

“I … I want to wrap my fingers around your hair, force your head down … your mouth-” The words stumble in fractured pieces from his throat, barely forming a coherent sentence, but stringing along just lucidly enough to paint a bright picture behind his eyelids. “Your throat is red from my hands … now you’re choking on my cock, too.” 

Holden gasps softly against the receiver, and whimpers, “Oh, yes … Keep going.” 

“I want you on your knees.” Bill says, his voice shaking as arousal begins to pound harder through his body. “Begging for it.”

“Yes, please-” Holden pants, his breath jolting against the receiver with what Bill can only imagine is the corresponding stroke of his hand. “God, I’m so close.”

Bill’s belly twists with need at the response, and he clamps down harder on his cock. He can feel the need crushing through his veins, swelling to the point of explosion, untamable, irreversible. 

“I’ve thought about it …” Bill mutters, “Fucking that pretty, smart mouth of yours.” 

Holden’s response is some strangled, whimpered sound, but it sounds like a plea, the kind that makes Bill’s body flush hot and hotter, towards flame. 

“Fucking it until your mouth is raw, until you can’t speak.” Bill whispers, his eyes rolling back pleasure clamps taut in his belly. “I’d come in your mouth, on your cheeks …” 

Holden’s voice sharpens to a whimpered cry. “Oh my God, Bill, I’m …” 

Bill’s own hand hastens against his cock as Holden’s pleasured moans seeth across the line in fractured gasps. The darkness behind his eyelids melds into sparks of white like a starry sky, and the heat in his belly sharpens to an unbearable ache before shattering into intense spasms of relief. He grips the phone tighter until his knuckles hurt as the orgasm tears through him, one pulse of pleasure after the next gripping his insides. He feels the hot rush of release between his fingers, across his knuckles, dampening the inside of his boxers with the sticky mess of climax. 

As the powerful grip of orgasm fades, Bill melts against the sheets, breathing heavily. His eyelids slip open to glimpse the surroundings of his rented room, the ugly, floral wallpaper staring back at him like a dungy backdrop of deviance. 

Holden’s breath punctuates the humming silence of the room, registering in fuzzy gasps from the receiver. It slows through the seconds until they’re both quietly clinging to the receiver from opposite ends of the line. 

More than a minute passes before he whispers, “Bill?”

Bill clears his throat. “I should get some rest. So should you.” 

“Yeah. Right.” 

Another beat of silence. Bill can feel his face growing unbearably hot with shame.

“Okay. Good night.” 

“See you on Monday.” Holden murmurs. 

Bill shuts his eyes at the thought of facing Holden next week. “Okay.” 

The line clicks, and Bill is left holding the receiver limply in his hand, his spent dick in the other. The dial tone hums in his ear for a long minute before he slowly guides the phone back to the cradle. The sound cuts off, plunging the room into silence. 

He staggers to the bathroom, and takes a quick, cold shower. The slick, milky evidence of what’s been done washes down the drain, but he can’t scrub the lingering hum of satisfaction from his skin. It lies ingrained beneath the surface, right alongside the image of his hands wrapped around Holden’s throat. 

~

The BSU office is buzzing with activity on Monday, the chatter of typewriters overlapping with ringing telephones and conversation. 

Holden sorts his mail and messages with fleeting concentration. His morning coffee sours in his belly as he reads the faxed police report from a precinct in Alabama requesting a consult for the fifth time. He feels cold and clammy despite the sweat itching in his armpits. 

He’d spent the entire weekend going over the phone call in his head, his mind meticulously picking apart the details as he recalls them, undoubtedly forgetting a few phrases in the heady blur of need that had overtaken him. Despite the shame churning in his belly, he’d woken Sunday morning with an unbearable erection, and masturbated thinking about Bill’s voice rasping across the phone line, all the dirty, unforgivable things he’d confessed to thinking of doing.

After, Holden tried to think about the situation clearly, and use the analytical part of his brain to determine a way forward. 

Bill appreciates blunt honesty, but he most likely won’t want to talk about it directly. He’s probably just as ashamed as Holden feels, perhaps more so considering that he’s not yet divorced from his wife. Besides all that, he openly admitted to being drunk at the beginning of the conversation, and Holden, stone cold sober, had plunged ahead despite it; his drunken compliance doesn’t exactly translate as consent. 

Holden thinks he should apologize, or at least try to explain his behavior in some way. The main issue with that plan is that he doesn’t have an explanation, none that make sense. The compulsion had seemingly come out of nowhere, leaping out to grip him from between the static across the line and the familiar, gravelly edges of Bill’s whispered voice. 

Apologizing sounds good in his head, if not a little too easy. Now that he’s sitting at his desk in the BSU, surrounded by the fixtures of their daily life - of reality - placating Bill’s anger and shame feels like an insurmountable task, one he’d rather cower away from than face directly. 

The dread simmering in Holden’s belly erupts into churning panic when the BSU door swings open, and Bill strides into the bullpen. 

Holden quickly averts his gaze to the police report in his hands. His gaze trips over the words  _ semen left at the scene,  _ and he presses his eyes shut against the image of the phone cord stretched across his soiled belly that’s imprinted on his mind. 

Bill crosses the room to pour a cup of coffee from the communal table in the corner, and takes his time ripping open four sugar packets and depositing them in the coffee. When he turns around with the coffee cup in his hand, his gaze collides with Holden’s from across the room. 

Face burning, Holden swings his eyes back to the police report. His shoulders stiffen as Bill strides across the bullpen, passing within two feet of Holden’s desk. He disappears into his office, not another glance spared in Holden’s direction. 

Holden lets out the breath he’d been holding, and rubs his forehead with his fingertips. 

Gregg pauses from his transcribing to take his headphones off, and shoot Holden a concerned glance from across their desks. “Are you okay?”

“What?”

“You look a little peaked, that’s all.” Gregg says. 

“No, I’m fine.” Holden says, managing a nonchalant tone. 

He glances up sharply when the door of Bill’s office opens again. In a cloud of cigarette smoke, Bill walks down to Wendy’s office, and knocks lightly on the door. He slips inside and eases the door shut behind him, cutting off Holden’s brief glimpse into the interaction. 

Holden swallows hard. He doesn’t think that Bill would tell anyone about what happened, but he trusts Wendy enough to confess some shielded version of the truth - to, at the very least, complain of Holden’s unprofessional behavior. 

Clenching his jaw, Holden shifts his gaze back to Gregg. “Are you almost done with the transcript?” 

“Yep.” Gregg says, “It should be done in another hour.”

“Good. I’m sure Wendy will want to review this morning.” Holden says. 

Gregg nods, and goes back to typing. 

Holden tries again to focus on the details of the police report, but his gaze keeps finding its way back to the closed door of Wendy’s office.  _ What are they discussing?  _ Maybe it has nothing to do with him or the phone call, but the idea of Wendy knowing any version of the truth is too mortifying to bear. 

Half an hour later, Bill emerges from the office. He checks in on Gregg’s progress with the transcript, and tells them both to be in the conference room in another thirty minutes to discuss the interview. 

His gaze holds Holden’s for a long moment, the corners of his eyes pinching with a grimace. It’s the only indication that he’s just as plagued by what happened as Holden. Once they get into the conference room to discuss Jones, the rigid layer of professionalism is firmly in place. The pale blue of his eyes regard Holden with an objective calm that’s cold as winter air yet hotly eviscerating in the same moment. Holden silently wishes he was just as good at lying to himself. 

  
  


~

The vibration of the plane reaching high altitude rattles into Holden’s bones before leveling out above the clouds. He grips the arms of the seat until the plane settles, engine surging into a low hum while the world disappears below them. 

There’s an empty seat between them. Midweek, the flight out to California is only half-full, allowing for the distance Bill is forcibly affixing between them. He has the middle tray down to hold his drink and his ashtray alongside the dossier on Roberto Casto, their next interview subject. 

Holden purses his lips as he glances down at his copy of the dossier in his lap. 

They’re talking about strangulation again. 

He stares at the photograph of the victim’s throat, battered black and blue by handprints. Her skin is stark white against the livid bruises. There shouldn’t be anything remotely arousing about it. 

He cuts a glance to his side where Bill has his head tilted back against the seat cushion. His elbow is braced against the armrest, holding aloft the hand gripping his cigarette. Under the canned lights of the plane, Holden can see every wrinkle, groove, and knot of his fingers and knuckles. The back of his hand is webbed with thick veins that throb just beneath the surface, barely obscured by the spill of smoke bleeding from his cigarette. 

Holden blinks as abrupt heat writhes in his belly. He clears his throat. 

“I think we need to go more in depth on the strangulation.” He says. 

Bill’s half-shut eyes slide over to meet Holden’s. “Yeah?” 

“A lot of these killers use strangulation, either manual or with some type of implement.”

Bill grunts a sound of agreement. 

“I’m curious whether Casto preferred to choke them from behind or from the front.” Holden says, flipping through the photos in his lap. “It looks like he was facing them from the handprints.” 

“Manual, too.” Bill says, “That’s tough work.”

Holden bites his lower lip. His stomach is churning again. 

Bill takes a light drag of his cigarette, and smoke pours from his nostrils. There’s a slight tremor in his hand as he extends the cigarette to expel ashes into the tray. 

“For Brudos, it was about control.” Holden says, drawing in a steadying breath. “Making sure they shut up. But for people like Jones, and perhaps Casto, there’s an intimacy to it - a connection to the victim as you see the light fading from their eyes.” 

“Don’t make it sound so fucking romantic.” Bill says, a frown knitting his brow. 

“That’s how they see it.” 

“Well, we’re not them.”

Holden’s shoulders tense at the defensive tone in Bill’s voice. He presses his eyes shut, feeling a cool sweat lining his chest. What happened lies beneath the surface, a landmine that he’s aware of yet unable to avoid. He can feel himself stepping towards it in slow motion. 

“What did you and Wendy talk about?” He asks, opening his eyes to the wispy white clouds sifting past the window. 

“When?” Bill asks. 

“Last Monday.” Holden says, shunting his gaze towards Bill, already feeling his cheeks growing hot. “When you came into work, you went straight into her office.”

Bill shifts higher in his seat, his mouth curling around his cigarette. “So?”

“So, was it-”

“About you?” Bill interrupts, his glare cutting past a cloud of smoke. “No, if you have to know - it wasn’t.”

Holden releases a clipped sigh. “Oh.”

“I have a lot of shit going on right now, Holden.” Bill says, “A lot of problems I’m trying to work through while still doing my job - you’re just one of them.”

A frown tugs at Holden’s brow as the vitriol in that muttered statement sizzles across the wounded edges of his pride.

“That isn’t my intention.” He says, his voice dwindling to a whisper. 

“Then what was your intention?” Bill asks, keeping his voice low despite the rasp of anger sharpening the word. 

“I don’t know, Bill.” Holden says, “I just wasn’t thinking clearly.”

He’d had a better apology planned if only he’d been prepared. Suddenly, they’re talking about it when they weren’t talking about it a minute ago, a whole week ago - on a plane, surrounded by strangers, no less. 

“No shit.” Bill mutters, shaking his head. “I told you I’d had too much to drink, Holden. I’m not sparing myself the responsibility, but … for Christ’s sake.”

Holden closes his eyes, feeling heat scald his cheeks. “You’re right. It was mostly my fault.”

Bill doesn’t respond for a long minute, and Holden slowly opens his eyes to glimpse Bill’s profile turned rigidly towards the front of the plane. His jaw ripples as he takes a drag of his cigarette.

“You were drunk. You didn’t mean it …?” He tries to say it like a statement of fact, but it comes out more like a question, tinged with hopeful longing. 

Bill’s nostrils flare with a breath. “No.”

“Not at all?” 

Bill cuts him a harsh glare. “No, Holden. I’m not having this conversation with you. Let’s just move on, and focus on Casto.”

“Of course, you’re right.” Holden nods, recoiling at the anger in Bill’s gaze. 

He turns his focus back to the dossier in his lap. He pushes aside the crime scene photos to glimpse the mug shot of Casto. The man’s eyes look dull and dead, and that should be enough to remind Holden that he isn’t anything like these killers - or their victims. Neither is Bill. But they’re headed for California where it all began, where Kemper first enthralled him and the kind sunlight cast Bill in every unusual and pleasant light; and it seems like he always does something stupid when they go out west together, a reckless trigger that he can’t stop pulling. He can’t be certain that this time will be any different. 


	2. Chapter 2

Deep in the bowels of San Quentin, there isn’t a room, no matter how confined, which is sound-proofed from the rattle of bars, the blare of buzzers, and the shouts of prisoners. The discordant symphony of sound nearly drowns out Casto’s quiet, raspy voice, and Holden pushes the microphone closer to the man’s slouched posture.

A second-generation Mexican-American, Casto has no accent to match his tanned complexion and shiny black hair. His voice is stuttered and meek, mismatched with the violent physicality of his crimes. Judging by the mug shot and trial photos, he’s lost some weight since being locked away five years ago, but his wiry arms and broad hands still contain enough musculature to overpower a young girl. 

Holden leans close while Casto recounts the details of his rough childhood, the abuse he endured at his father’s hand, the coming-and-going of his drunken mother. A highschool dropout, he lacked education and social skills, and suffered through a string of lost jobs before securing employment as a janitor at the University of California, Berkeley. Here, his killing began in earnest. 

As they shift away from childhood and background and towards the details of the killings, Holden opens the case file to extricate a few of the crime scene photos. 

“Strangulation.” He says, his voice echoing against the cement walls of the room. 

Beside him, Bill leans back in his chair to light a cigarette. 

“That was your MO.” Holden continues, sliding a handful of pictures across the table to where Casto is hunched over in his chair. 

“MO?” 

“ _ Modus Operandi.”  _ Holden says, “The way you killed.”

In the dim light, Casto’s brown eyes are nearly black. They shift upwards to meet Holden’s, and there’s a flicker of fire behind them, a spark of life that’s been lacking since the beginning of the conversation. 

“Can you tell me more about that?” Holden asks, softly. 

Casto sniffs in a breath as he scans the pictures. “My father didn’t keep weapons in the house. He used his hands to hurt people. I suppose that’s where I learned it.” 

“Did your father ever choke you?”

“No, man.” Casto says, his brow furling. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Did he choke your mother?”

Casto’s teeth push against his lower lip. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Bill echoes. “You don’t remember?”

Casto’s gaze shifts to Bill, and he lifts his shoulders. “I try not to think about either of them.”

“Well, thank you for sharing with us what you have.” Holden says, shooting Bill a firm glance. “When did your fantasies of strangling women begin?”

Casto draws in a deep breath. “As far back as I can remember. I started on my sister’s dolls. On animals. There were a lot of stray cats in our neighborhood. Nobody ever noticed them missing.”

“But people notice when pretty young college girls go missing.” 

“Yeah, especially rich white ones.” Casto says, his head tilting to one side.

“Is that why you did it?” Holden asks, “Because you hated them for being rich and white?”

Casto’s eyes dart away, and he focuses on the grimy, tiled floor for a long moment before he leans forward to brace his elbows on the table. 

“They looked right through me.” He says, “I was nothing to them, not worthy of their time or attention. I was fucking invisible.”

“Until you made them see.” Holden murmurs, gripping his pen tighter. “You made them look at you. You were the last thing they saw before they died.”

Casto leans back in his chair, and crosses his arms, regarding Holden with narrowed eyes. “You’ve got it all figured out, Agent Ford. What do you need me for?”

“Well, Roberto, I’m curious.” Holden says. 

He hears Bill shift in his chair, the faint squeal of the metal chair legs against the tile. 

“ _ We’re  _ curious.” Bill inserts, “We need you to tell us how you felt when you were strangling them. Only you can tell us that.”

Holden glances at Bill from the corner of his eye, and absorbs the warning glare radiating from Bill’s tensed expression. 

He clears his throat. “So, how did you feel when you choked them?” 

“Were you angry, aroused?” Bill asks. 

Casto’s jaw clenches as he concentrates on the photos in front of him. Holden can tell he’s seriously considering the question, and that maybe he’s never thought about it before. 

“I can’t really describe it.” Casto says, his arms wrapping tighter around his middle. “It’s both and … it’s neither.”

“What does that mean?” Bill presses, a frown deepening between his brows. 

“I don’t know. It’s just this feeling that came over me.” Casto says, “Maybe I was angry, but once I put my hands around their throats, it was … It was something different. It was this  _ headrush _ . I felt powerful for the first time in my life. I could feel her blood  _ pounding  _ under my hands, her throat trying to breathe. The sound that would come out of her mouth - this wheezing. Have you ever heard someone suffocate to death before, Agent Ford?” 

Holden shakes his head, concentrating on maintaining an unaffected expression. 

“It sounds inhuman.” Casto murmurs. “Not much different from a kitten. That’s what she became in that moment - a weak, little kitten, her eyes looking up at me like- … She would look at me like I was God.”

Holden hears Bill’s breath punch from his lungs in a frustrated sigh. 

“God?” Holden echoes.

“Her life was in my hands.” Casto says, his eyes blinking as if emerging from a dream. “Isn’t that what God feels like?”

“Does God get turned on by choking small, helpless women?” Bill asks, forcing Casto’s clinging gaze from Holden. 

“That came after.” 

“Once they couldn’t fight back anymore?” Bill asks, his mouth sneering around his cigarette. 

“Once they were still and quiet.” Casto says, a faint smile curling his lips. “A dead body stays warm for a little while, you know. I was always gone before they’d turned cold.”

“So it’s about power?” Holden says, quietly. 

“I guess.” Casto says, “Nobody has ever asked me before. I’ve never really thought about it.”

The sky is oversaturated with dusky, yellow sunlight by the time Bill and Holden emerge from San Quentin. It’s past five o’clock, and the air is turning dense and sweet with impending evening. 

Holden squints against the glaring sun as he and Bill walk silently across the parking lot to the rental car. Casto’s voice circles his head, yet another illogical part of an equation he can’t quite decipher. He isn’t sure what he’d expected - for Casto to look into his eyes and say something logical, something that makes sense? For Holden to have no connection to his confession and assuage his guilty flesh? 

They both get into the car, but Bill sits with the keys in his hand for a long moment. His sigh punctuates the humming silence. 

“Did you get what you wanted?” He asks, turning the keys over between his fingers. 

“No.”

“No?”

Holden glances over at him, frowning. “The strangulation means something different to all of these men. For Brudos, it was about making them quiet. For Jones, it was intimacy; and for Casto, it’s about power and subjugation.”

“Isn’t that what we’re discovering?” Bill asks, “That all these men are different?”

“We’re supposed to be looking for connections.”

“It is a connection. It proves that all these men lack the social skills to attract women in the natural manner.” Bill says, “Beneath the bullshit, they’re just losers.”

“Is that  _ really _ all it’s about?” Holden asks, sharply.

Bill shakes his head as he turns the key in the ignition. “I don’t know what you were expecting to discover. These men are psychopaths - sometimes you can’t make sense of it no matter how hard you try.”

Holden sinks lower against the seat as Bill steers the car away from the prison. The sprawling building shrinks in the rearview mirror, but the blackness in Casto’s eyes lingers behind the orange glow blazing across the back of Holden’s shut eyelids. 

As they reach the freeway, Bill cracks a window to ash his cigarette, and warm, summer air fills the car.

Across the bay, Holden can glimpse the distant gleaming red of the Golden Gate Bridge stretched across the vast waters, and not for the first time, he thinks of Ed - the slide of his fingertip across Holden’s thundering pulse. He wonders if that’s where it all began, but quickly shoves it to the back of his mind. If he thinks too hard about Vacaville, some intractable panic rises like a tide to swallow him. It had taken him months to build himself back up from that brush with death, that freefall into panic, only to be torn apart again by the failures of Atlanta. Since they returned from Georgia, he’s felt himself slipping, fracturing apart at the seams, and maybe that’s what he really wants - for Bill to hold the broken pieces of him together again, if only with a fist wrapped tightly around his throat. 

~

Bill orders room service for dinner. The steak is rubbery and the baked potato is half-cold, but his focus lingers somewhere beyond the mechanical motions of chewing and swallowing down the bland meal. 

He turns on the television to distract himself from his thoughts, flipping through news reports, weather forecasts, soap operas, and re-runs of black-and-white Western shows before settling on the baseball game creeping towards the eighth inning. With too many outs, the home field is stifled and humming with anxiety.

Bill lights a cigarette, and sinks down against the pillows piled against the headboard of the bed. Frustration simmers in his chest. Casto’s hubris, hidden behind layers of meek posturing and a hushed voice, had burst through with one phrase.  _ She looks at me like I’m God.  _ It makes his stomach turn, and he doesn’t want to be associated in any way with a man like Casto. But the words have come out of his mouth, and he already is associated with it to the only person who matters. 

_ Holden.  _

Bill closes his eyes against an unbidden sigh and a faint prickle of need in his belly. Despite his best efforts over the last week, he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about the contents of that phone call. He’d been drunk, but not drunk enough to black out the details of what he’d said, what he’d  _ confessed.  _ Like infection from an untreated wound, the raw truth had seeped out in rivers, irrepressible; and now, it is open and festering, exposed for both of them to witness.

Bill’s eyes jolt open when he hears a quiet knock at his door. 

Discarding his cigarette in the ashtray, he crosses the room to the door. Just as he’s pressing his face to the peephole, the knock comes again, more urgently. Beyond the fisheye lens, he glimpses Holden standing in the hallway. 

“Fuck.” Bill mutters. 

He braces a hand against the door for a moment before drawing in a deep, steadying breath. He twists the door knob open, and cracks the door just far enough to stick his head out. 

“Hi.” Holden says, his eyes drifting up from the carpet to bashfully meet Bill’s. 

“Do you need something?” Bill asks, gripping the doorframe with white knuckles. 

Holden takes a shuffling step closer. “Can I come in?”

Bill frowns as his gaze wanders over Holden’s flushed cheeks. His eyes are glassy. 

“Have you been drinking?” Bill asks. 

“I had a few down in the hotel bar.” Holden says, “I would’ve asked you to join me, but …”

“But what?”

Holden glances down at his shoes. “So, can I come in?”

Bill weighs his choices. He could say no, and be the superior in the situation. It would be the right thing to do, telling Holden to go back to his room and sleep it off. 

Leaning back from the door frame, Bill lets the door fall open. He waves a hand toward the room, and feels his pulse leap when Holden shuffles across the threshold. Easing the door shut behind him, Bill appraises the back of Holden’s head. 

“I thought we could discuss Casto more.” Holden says, “There’s a lot of information to sort through.”

“Are you really capable of doing that right now?”

Holden turns, swaying on his feet. “I’m not that drunk.”

Bill scoffs, “Sure you aren’t. Sit down before you fall on your ass.”

Holden complies, wandering around the foot of the bed, and sinking down to the mattress with a weary sigh. He falls to his back against the pillows, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the bed. 

“I don’t think I’m ever going to get what I want from Casto or Jones.” Holden says, staring up at the ceiling with a frown. 

Bill draws closer, suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he’s in his undershirt and boxers, and Holden’s shirt is untucked and unbuttoned. His hair is messy, too, like he’s been running his fingers through it. 

“Why not?”

“I have no interest in choking small, helpless women.” Holden says, lifting a trembling hand to rub his forehead. 

“Well, that’s good to hear.” Bill says, managing a strangled laugh. 

“For what I want, I’d have to talk to the victims.” Holden murmurs, “To know what they felt … what it feels like to-”

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Bill interrupts, a scowl knitting his brow. “You’re talking about innocent, dead girls.”

Holden lifts his head from the pillows. His eyes glint with inebriation in the white-blue light of the television. “I don’t know, Bill. I just haven’t stopped thinking about it since we-”

“No, Holden.” Bill says, shaking his head. “I said I’m not having this conversation with you. I was drunk, okay?”

“So you wouldn’t have said it if you weren’t?” Holden asks, dragging himself up from the sheets. There’s a slight whine in his voice, a strain of desperation that sounds a little too pleasing to Bill’s ears. 

“No.” Bill says, gruffly. “Of course not.”

“You said … You said you’ve thought about it.” Holden whispers, his gaze climbing imploringly to meet Bill’s. 

Bill stiffens, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Suddenly, his pulse is thundering, and Holden is cowering on the bed beneath him, ready and willing; but he’d let Holden in the door and this is his fault, his mess to clean up - not his to make it worse. 

“Your exact words were … you’ve thought about fucking my pretty, smart mouth.”

“I know what I said.” Bill says, the retort biting past his lips with a surge of humiliation. “It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have said that. We shouldn’t have-”

“But you did.” Holden says, “I’m not asking about what should’ve happened. I’m asking if …” He glances away, his cheeks growing warm. “If you meant it.”

Bill draws in a staggered breath. First smoke, then fire curls through his veins; he can feel himself catching flame, need bursting hot between his thighs at the source of this deviant idea. He tries to tamp it down, but no amount of cold water or dose of reality could contain the spreading flames at this point. 

Holden peeks up from the floor, his eyes wide and eager, his mouth trembling and open. 

“Do you think about me like that?” He whispers, his fist curling around a handful of the bed sheets. He swallows hard. “Because, I do. I think about you … all of the time. I can’t stop.”

Bill tries to rein in the need for a few scarce, breathless seconds, but he’s grappling with something that he can’t understand, let alone control. 

In a few quick strides, he’s closed the space between them. Blinded by scorching need, he barely registers that he’s moved until his hand is around Holden’s throat, throwing him back against the sheets. They tumble to the bed, Bill’s weight pressing hard between Holden’s open, trembling thighs, his ribs pinning Holden’s squirming body while his hand latches underneath his jaw. 

Holden gasps, a scraped, breathless sound that etches itself across Bill’s mind. Both of his hands cling to Bill’s wrist, not pulling but encouraging the squeeze of Bill’s fingers around the soft, open length of his throat. 

“ _There_.” Bill spits, furiously, giving Holden a shake. “Is this what you wanted?”

Holden nods against his grip, his mouth sputtering in a wordless affirmation.

Bill cinches his fingers tighter around either side of Holden’s throat, and feels the knot of his esophagus rebel with a struggling swallow. The skin is soft and tender, yielding to the grip of his hand like dough begging to be kneaded into submission. 

“Please…” Holden rasps, his voice a foreign, hoarse sound that causes the rushing blood in Bill’s veins to pound harder through his temples, his chest, his groin. 

“Please what? You want me to hurt you? Is that it?”

Holden’s brow furrows as he pants helplessly against Bill’s palm. His nails dip into Bill’s wrist, applying just enough pressure to allow him to draw in a wheezing breath. 

“Isn’t it what  _ you _ want?” He whispers. 

Bill lets go abruptly, and scrambles back against the sheets, breathing hard. 

Holden gasps in a scraped breath, and coughs, one hand clutching at his reddened throat. 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Bill says. Every inch of him is shaking; he’s lightheaded with the rush of adrenaline, the spike of his blood pressure sending an unrelenting throb straight to his cock. “This is crazy.”

Holden shoves up against the pillows. He blinks, sending a trickle of moisture leaking from the corner of his eye and down his flushed cheek. 

“I’m not going to hurt you, Holden.” Bill says, rising to his feet. “I don’t want to fucking hurt you, I just-”

“Just what?” Holden whispers, “I think you liked choking me just now.”

“I didn’t like it. I-”

Bill stops as his belly twists, as if attached to Holden’s tongue by a string. He glances down to see his boxers tented obscenely, a direct rebuttal to the lie that just passed his lips. 

“I think we both liked it.” Holden says, rising from the bed on trembling legs. 

He approaches Bill carefully, and extends one hand to graze Bill’s forearm. 

Bill closes his eyes, sucking in a deep breath. He presses his fingertips to his eyelids, struggling to suppress the desire burning across his mind. 

“We all have fantasies.” Holden whispers, his fingertips climbing along the inside of Bill’s wrist where his pulse is pounding. “Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to indulge in them a little bit.”

“Doesn’t hurt?” Bill echoes, opening his eyes to glimpse Holden’s face and throat, still pink from his grip. 

“We’ve both been through a lot since Atlanta.” Holden says, shifting closer. “Maybe this is something we both need.”

Bill averts his gaze, fighting the logic in Holden’s suggestion. Yes, some days - especially since he came home to an empty house - he feels like every bit of rage, hurt, and longing can’t be contained inside his chest, that one day he will burst and the force of it could kill him. Some days the thought of touching someone else even in the slightest manner is enough to make every inch of him ache with an acute longing because it’s been so fucking long since he had that kind of intimacy. And sometimes, he wants to take his frustration out on something, someone, anyone, anything before he can’t take it any longer, before it poisons the rest of his life. 

But Holden can’t be right about this. He can’t be.  _ He can’t.  _

“I want you to do it.” Holden says, his voice drawing Bill’s gaze back up from the carpet. His eyes are deep blue, longing, endless. “Please, Bill. You won’t hurt me that badly, just enough to-”

“Just enough?” Bill says, his voice choking incredulously from his chest. “Jesus, Holden. This is fucked up. Do you even hear yourself?” He pulls his hand out of Holden’s grasp, and takes a stumbled step backwards. “If you need to talk to someone about Atlanta, fine. I’m sure Wendy would be more than happy to listen. But don’t expect me to indulge in your sick fantasies. They’re yours, not mine.”

Holden’s mouth slips open, and he appears hurt. But Bill can’t be bothered with his drunken feelings or the darkness swimming behind his eyes. 

He marches across the room to the door, and yanks it open. 

“Go back to your room and sleep it off.” Bill says, motioning to the hallway. “Maybe tomorrow when you aren’t so drunk, you’ll be thinking clearly.”

Holden stares at him for a long moment before shuffling across the room. He pauses in the hallway, his head lowered. He seems to be on the verge of pushing the limits of the conversation, but instead he mutters, “Goodnight, Bill.”

Bill leans against the doorframe, and watches him wander back down the hall to his room. He doesn’t shut the door until he sees Holden let himself into his room and disappear safely inside. 

Bill lies back down on the bed, but he can’t focus on the final minutes of the baseball game playing out on the screen. Finally, aggravated by the clamor, he turns off the television, and pulls the sheets over his body. He turns the lamp off, plunging the room into darkness. Huddled beneath the blankets and hidden from the world, he resists the urge for the space of a minute before slipping his hand beneath his boxers. The pleasure comes slow and aching against the lurching remnants of his shame, but after several desperate minutes of furiously rubbing himself raw, the fresh memory of Holden’s throat underneath of his fist triggers the first deep spasm. He bites into the pillow as the orgasm hits hard, and he shoots heavy streams of release into his underwear. 

He lies still for several minutes, listening the scraped sound of his breathing. The humiliation is quick to crawl up through his chest, burning like acid from his belly to the back of his throat. He peels off the soiled underwear, wipes his groin and his hand with them, and tosses them over the edge of the bed. Exhausted and frustrated, he curls his arm over his head, and tries desperately to find oblivion in sleep. 

~

The Alabama humidity hits Holden in the face the moment they step out of the Hunstville International Airport. Instantly, he’s sweating through his shirt, but the discomfort is almost secondary to the suffocating tension that winds like cellophane around him and Bill. 

While Holden goes into the car rental office to secure their transportation, Bill stands out in the parking lot smoking a cigarette. He’s wearing a pale pink shirt with an ugly paisley tie. His aviator sunglasses are perched on the bridge of his nose to shield from the blaring sunlight while smoke curls in winding tendrils from his lips. Holden doesn’t realize he’s staring until the clerk returns to the desk with a set of keys and the paperwork. 

Holden signs and pays for the car, and takes the key with a muttered thank you. Lingering in the air conditioned office for a minute, he tries to organize his thoughts. They’re here on a case, and he needs to prioritize the victims over his own desires. 

It’s been a little over two weeks since California, but the drunken memories are tacked across the back of his mind like a pincushion, a shameful display of desperation that won’t soon be forgotten. It would be easier to write off as a bad decision made under the influence of alcohol if Bill hadn’t responded; but he had - he laid hands on Holden, and now they’re both culpable. 

Holden meets Bill by the rental car as Bill is discarding his spent cigarette. 

“Ready?” Bill asks, eyes guarded behind his sunglasses. 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll drive.” Bill says. He swipes the keys from Holden’s limp hand, fingers grazing brusquely across his palm. 

Holden curls his hand into a fist as Bill ducks behind the wheel. The engine coughs to life, urging him into motion. 

The drive to the precinct in Decatur is utterly silent save for the low hum of Frank Sinatra playing at low volume from the radio. Bill smokes another cigarette, and Holden loosens his tie against the unforgiving heat. 

At the police station, they’re greeted by the lead on the case, Detective Crawford. Crawford is a tall, older man with neatly combed, silver hair and large glasses. His mustache is impeccably trimmed, his shirt starched and ironed. His grasp is firm when they shake hands, and he offers only a few pleasantries before announcing they should get right down to it. Holden appreciates the directness considering that they were asked here to draw up a profile of a man who is murdering pre-teen girls. 

Decatur has two dead bodies and one missing girl. The first one was bludgeoned to death while the second had her throat cut. 

“He’s learning.” Bill says. 

“From ear-to-ear.” Holden says, examining the photo of the second girl. “He did it the right way.”

“What does that mean?” Crawford asks. 

“If you don’t cut from ear-to-ear, it gives the victim a slow, painful death.” Holden says, “They suffocate rather than bleed out quickly.”

Crawford’s brow furrows. “Don’t men like this want their victim to suffer?”

“Not necessarily.” Bill says, “Sometimes, the death is the bi-product of the act and nothing more.”

“It’s about the rape.” Holden says, “He knows what he’s done is wrong so he has to eliminate the witness - the victim.” 

“Bludgeoning is messy, protracted.” Bill says, “You hit someone, you expect them to fall or pass out. It doesn’t always happen that way. The cutting of the throat is quick and easy.”

“Jesus.” Crawford says, rubbing a hand across his jaw. “I never thought of it that way.”

“We’ve seen this type of killer before.” Holden says, “He’s a pedophile, a social outcast. He can’t help himself. It’s a compulsion, one that he’s forced to repeat over and over to try to achieve the same rush he experienced the first time.” 

“So you already have a good idea of who we should be looking for?” Crawford asks, sounding slightly hopeful despite his gruff demeanor. 

“I think so.” Bill says, “But let's not get ahead of ourselves. We should go over everything before we start setting anything in stone just yet.” 

“All right.” Crawford says, nodding across the bullpen. “Let’s go to the conference room. I have all the evidence, photographs, and reports in there that you asked for.” 

“Some coffee would be great, too.” Bill says, clapping Crawford on the shoulder. 

“I can’t promise what it’ll taste like.” Crawford says, allowing a chuckle. 

“No problem. We’ve had our fair share of police station sludge.” 

Holden trails behind them as they head for the conference room. Bill seems calm, relaxed. The professional equilibrium between them is operating like a well-oiled machine, but by now it’s just instinct. The thought of what’s been exposed and confessed between them surges underneath like a rip current, momentarily concealed yet waiting to pull his feet out from under him at any moment. Bill must feel it, too. He has to. 

The upheaval in Holden’s mind tempers to a dull roar as they enter the conference room, and he sees the photographs of the victims and dump sites aligned on the cork board. Three young faces stare back at him, reminding him that he’s meant to be here profiling a killer, not his own partner. 

Wandering closer to the board, Holden shoves his trembling hands in his pockets, and manages a thready sigh. The first scene is gruesome, the girl’s face nearly indistinguishable as human from the beating she’d taken. 

“We think he used some sort of blunt object.” Crawford says from behind his right shoulder. “A baseball bat or pipe.”

“He lost control.” Holden whispers. “What he’d done overwhelmed him.”

His gaze shifts to the second girl. Throat slit. Blood loss, a hazy trip into dreamland. Merciful in comparison to the first kill. 

“My guess is the first one wasn't planned out. But now he has a taste for it.” Bill says, suddenly at Holden’s left side. 

Holden glances up to see Bill scouring the photos with a critical gaze. The line of his jaw is sharp beneath the glare of the paneled lighting. He turns his gaze back to the pictures, and feels sick. Sick for their senseless deaths, sick for his own dark urges that lie on a boundary far too close to deviant. He closes his eyes and tries to banish the lingering idea from his thoughts, but when he opens them again, Bill is still standing right beside him. 

~

The first victim, Mary Taylor, was abducted while she was walking to school. Her parents’ home is small and neat, but Bill can see the cracks in the drywall, the rusted pipes under the sink, the hairline fractures in the wood floors that are starting to warp with time and use. 

Mrs. Taylor, a petite woman with thin, blond hair and a meek disposition, offers them coffee in chipped, china cups while they take a seat on the flattened couch cushions. Bill feels his weight sink down against the worn out springs. 

“Thank you for meeting with us.” Bill says, addressing Mr. Taylor who is seated in the chair across the coffee table from them. “I know you already went over everything with Detective Crawford a few weeks back, but we’re trying to go over all the details with a fine tooth comb.” 

“It’s okay. We want to help the investigation in any way that we can.” Mr. Taylor says. 

He’s a lumbering man with big, coarse hands and an unruly beard. A mechanic, his fingernails are broken and stained black, and he smells faintly of oil that might not be washed off with a hundred baths. Bill can tell that he’s holding himself together forcibly, too proud to expose any type of emotion even in the face of his young daughter’s brutal death. 

“We’re really trying to get more information on Mary.” Holden says, gently. “What was she like? What were her interests?”

“She was a sweet girl.” Mrs. Taylor says, sinking tremulously to her chair. “She wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“Was she outgoing, friendly?” Holden asks. 

“She, uh, kept more to herself.” Mr. Taylor replies, shifting uncomfortably. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“Of course not.” Bill says, “We’re just trying to understand who she was as a person, the reason why she was … why someone would have noticed her.”

“We didn’t let our daughter dress provocatively.” Mr. Taylor says, his brow furling with a scowl. “She was a decent, obedient child.” 

His voice breaks at the end, and he looks away, rubbing a hand over his beard. 

“We understand.” Bill says, “And I’m sorry that this is painful, but we need to ask these questions.” 

Mr. Taylor nods, his jaw clenching back emotion. 

“Did any new people come into your lives recently?” Bill asks, “Men, specifically. It could have been someone she only met once.”

“No, I can’t think of anyone.” Mrs. Taylor says, shaking her head. “She knew not to go off with strangers.”

“No one at church or from the school?”

“Church?” Mrs. Taylor echoes, “You think someone from our church could do such a thing?” 

“We’re learning that this type of person is good at hiding who they really are.” Holden says, “They try to blend in.”

“I can’t think of anyone.” Mrs. Taylor says, her eyes misting with tears. “I keep imagining some strange man in the dark, grabbing her from the sidewalk. We should have never let her walk alone. We should have …” 

Bill lowers his head as the woman stifles a sob. He watches the two parents while she cries. Mr. Taylor doesn’t look at his wife’s tears. His face is turned toward the window where summer sunlight dapples the curtains in bands of yellow, and the front yard is verdant with life.

“We’re very sorry to make you go over this again.” Holden says, “But if you can help us think of anything that might inform on who could have done this, it would be very useful.”

Mrs. Taylor bolts upright suddenly. 

Bill and Holden exchange glances as she marches out of the room. They hear her rifling through a cabinet in the other room before she returns with a photo album clutched in her thin arms. 

She drops the book on the coffee table, and lays it open with trembling fingers. She flips past baby pictures, a happy child learning to sit up, crawl, and stand. She stops when she reaches a picture of Mary, perhaps five years old, hanging off the gate of a barn, her hand outstretched to feed a carrot to a regal, brown horse. 

“This is Mary.” Mrs. Taylor says, her voice trembling as she stabs a finger at the picture. “She was a sweet, innocent girl who loved horses. This picture is from my father’s farm. She loved going there to visit this horse in particular - his name was Tanner. He was the gentlest creature you could have ever met, and Mary loved him with all her heart. There was no room inside her for malice, Agent Tench. There was barely room in her heart for the amount of love she had for this horse. She wasn’t a cheerleader or a popular girl. She didn’t have a lot of friends, but no one hated her. She just kept to herself, and read her books, and dreamed about having her own horse one day. She didn’t attract attention to herself. She didn’t make people stare at her. She was a good girl, she was …”

The frail woman trails off as tears burst past her desperate tirade. Her head falls into her hands, and her shoulders shake with tears. Mr. Taylor continues to stare out the window, his hand braced against his mouth. Bill can see tears swimming in his eyes, but he refuses to let them fall. 

“Thank you for time.” Holden says, quietly. “We’re sorry to have disturbed you.”

He rises abruptly from the couch, and marches out of the living room. The storm door leading to the front porch protests with a loud squeal as he shoulders his way out of the cramped house, and swings shut behind him. 

Bill clears his throat. “If you think of anything else, please call Detective Crawford.” 

He slides one of the business cards Crawford had given him from his shirt pocket, and places it on the open face of the photo album. It slides across the glossy sheath, obscuring the childhood joy on Mary’s face. 

Bill finds Holden standing at the curb outside of the house. The hot, summer breeze groans down the narrow street, rustling the sweaty curls at his temples. His hands are tucked in his pockets, and his eyes are fixed on the cracked asphalt. 

Bill sighs, and pulls his cigarettes out of his pocket. “Not much room for empathy in that house.” He says. 

“What do you mean?” Holden asks, quietly, toeing at a loose pebble. 

“Did you see her father’s body language?” Bill asks. “He could hardly look at his wife’s pain. How does a man like that know anything about his own daughter?” 

“Mrs. Taylor certainly knows something about her.” Holden says, his voice strained. 

“I imagine that’s the most she’s cried in the last three weeks.” Bill says. “A father and a husband like that … he doesn’t want to see it. It follows that the rest of the household has to behave the same way.”

Holden fails to respond, and the air fills with the dull whir of cicadas. Bill hears him sniff quietly. He glances over to see Holden rubbing fiercely at his eyelids with a trembling hand. 

“Hey, are you okay?” Bill asks, dragging his cigarette from his mouth. 

Smoke clouds the air between them as Holden looks up from the asphalt with shimmering eyes, vibrant blue against the backdrop of the cloudless sky. 

“I couldn’t stop thinking about them.” He says, “The mothers in Atlanta.” 

Bill swallows hard. 

“I failed them.” Holden says, his eyes slipping shut. “That’s the worst part about it, Bill - the part I can’t shake.” 

“You didn’t fail them. We did the best we could.”

“Williams did not kill all those kids, and you know it.” Holden says, shaking his head. “We both know it. Some sick fuck out there got away with it.”

“We’re not going to let that happen this time.” Bill says, grasping Holden’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “You hear me?”

Holden’s eyes slide open again, and he clenches his jaw against the emotion bursting at his seams. He nods faintly, but the confidence has yet to meet his eyes. 

“Come on.” Bill says, nodding towards the car. “We’ll both feel better after we get some lunch.”

As they walk towards the car, Bill casts a glance back at the Taylor home. He can see Mrs. Taylor’s figure silhouetted behind the black screen of the storm door. Her arms are wrapped around her middle, holding herself in one crumbling piece. She raises a faint hand in departing acknowledgement, and Bill looks away, thinking maybe the only thing he’s good at anymore is making promises he can’t keep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a little bit of everything in this chapter! Let me know your thoughts :)
> 
> I'm [prinxcesskayy](https://prinxcesskayy.tumblr.com//) on Tumblr!


	3. Chapter 3

A week later, the third girl’s body is discovered by a farmer in the vast stretch of a soybean field. She was raped, throat cut, but her body had been washed and dressed. The killer wrapped her in a sheet, concealing her face. 

“Remorse?” Bill asks. 

“There’s a fine line between guilt and remorse.” Holden says. 

The investigation slogs on from there with no real leads to speak of. They’ve extracted a lot of DNA and fiber evidence from the victims, but have nothing to match it to; and by the time the tests come back from the lab, another girl is already missing. They know their killer is blood type O positive, that he’s male, and that he has carpet that can be bought from thousands of suppliers across the country. They know the fourth victim is out there somewhere probably already dead.

On Friday, Bill flies back to Virginia for the weekly therapist appointment with Brian. He doesn’t tell Nancy about the trip to Alabama, knowing that she’ll likely become irate with the fact that he’s once again straddling an investigation and the mounting pressures at home. Meanwhile, Gunn is still in the dark about Brian, and there’s half a dozen missed calls from his divorce lawyer on his desk when he checks in at the BSU before catching the flight back to Decatur. 

The following Wednesday, Bill and Holden stop at the hotel bar after a long, tedious day at the precinct. Tomorrow, they’ll start re-canvassing the dump sites. Another hot, sweaty round of sitting in parked cars at night, only this time it’ll be empty fields rather than bridges and rivers. The long hours of the investigation are about to lengthen into the small hours of the night, and Bill would rather push off that thought as long as he possibly can. 

He watches from the corner of his eye as Holden asks the bartender for bourbon for himself and whiskey for Bill. 

“Straight for the hard liquor, huh?” Bill asks, leaning forward to brace his elbows on the bar. 

“It’s what you would’ve ordered, isn’t it?” Holden asks, shooting him a faint smile. 

“Yep.” 

“You look about as exhausted as I feel.” Holden says, “How was your weekend?”

“The same.” Bill says, “I feel like I’m repeating Atlanta.”

Holden sighs, “Me too.”

Bill bites the inside of his cheek as Holden loosens his tie. His pale neck is faintly flushed from the lingering heat of the outdoors, and his jawline is scarcely peppered with day old stubble. Bill wants to run his thumb across it, feel the grainy prickle before it melds into soft, hairless skin stretched over a pounding pulse. 

The bartender slides their drinks across the bar, and Bill clears his throat to offer a muttered thanks. He takes a sip of his whiskey, savoring the astringent burn that travels down his throat and into his belly. 

“I have a strategy that I think might work.” Holden says, “I wanted to run it past you before we bring it to Crawford.”

“I think anything would help at this point.” Bill says. “What is it?”

“The mothers. They’re the key.”

“What about them?” 

“We posited that the killer feels guilty.” Holden says, “So let’s overwhelm him with his guilt. Let’s get all of the mothers together - the ones that will cooperate at least - and have a press conference. We’ll have this newest victim, Debbie Marsh’s mother be the voice, pleading the killer to return her daughter safely; but seeing all of their faces at once might be what it takes to make him snap.”

“Just the mothers?” Bill asks. 

“Most people love their mother, whether they want to admit it or not.” Holden says, “And knowing that he’s doing this to them by taking their little girls might get through to him.” 

“Okay, I agree. It sounds like a good idea.” Bill says, “But we have to get them on board first. Going before the media after a loss like this could be too much for any of them to handle.” 

“I think we should start by asking Mary’s mother.” Holden says, “She was the first, and she might be able to unite all four families. Besides, she was …”

“Was what?” Bill asks, peering at Holden’s clenched jaw over the rim of his glass. 

Holden draws in a slow breath past his nostrils. “Her pain was … excruciating. It would move anyone. It moved me.” 

Bill swallows down his sip of whiskey against the knot forming in the back of his throat. He can see the tremor working its way down Holden’s spine. Fragile, breakable. His concern only goes so far before it abuts with his needs, a violent hunger that rests insatiably in the pit of his stomach. There’s something intoxicating about the shudder of Holden’s breath, the verge of tears, the possibility of a strangled whimper. 

Glancing away, Bill draws in a staggered breath. The lights in the hotel bar are suddenly too bright and glaring, and he feels naked beneath him, exposed. If Holden looked this way, could he see what lies beneath, what fantasies Bill has tried to shove off, yet has failed to remove from his mind? 

“Didn’t it move you?” Holden asks, after a quiet moment. 

Bill clears his throat. “Sure. But who’s to say she’ll even agree to it?" 

“She wants her daughter back.” Holden says, “And if she can’t have that, she must at least want some answers, or to take control for once in her life. She’ll do it.” 

“Okay.” Bill says, “Let’s run it by Crawford in the morning. It’s got to be better than just sitting in a car, waiting for another body to drop.” 

Holden takes a bolstering sip of his bourbon. “I can’t let this turn out like Atlanta, Bill.” He whispers, shaking his head. 

“We won’t.” Bill says, pressing certainty into his tone. 

They finish their drinks in silence, and Bill pays the tab without offering. 

The halls of the hotel hold a subdued silence as they get off the elevator on their floor. They walk the increasingly familiar path to their rooms, two turns to the left, the first two doors on the right as they come around the corner, side-by-side. 

They exchange their goodnights, and go into their separate rooms. 

Bill leans back against the door to push it shut, and stares at the pale blue striped wallpaper and the empty bed looking back at him. He slides his cigarettes from his pocket, and lights one in the darkness, the orange flame leaping up before turning to smoke. Drawing in a breath of nicotine, he feels his lungs constrict against something taut and longing burrowing beneath his breastbone. 

The sound of the telephone ringing from the nightstand jars him from his thoughts. Flipping on the light switch, Bill strides across the room to grab the receiver. 

“Hello?”

“Hi, Bill.” Nancy says, her tone already clipped despite the pleasantry. 

It takes him a second to realize that there’s no reason she should have this number, let alone be calling it. 

“Nance?” 

“So you really are in Alabama.” She says, scoffing from the back of her throat. 

“Yes, I’m on a case.”

“And you didn’t think it would be a good idea to inform me or Tim?”

“I got Tim’s messages, and I’m going to return them when I actually have time to sit down and talk with him.” Bill says, grimacing at the thought of the divorce lawyer’s undoubtedly brewing frustration. 

“God, Bill. Nothing ever changes, does it?” She says, exasperated. 

“I still have a job to do.” Bill says, “I’m sorry that I can’t drop everything the moment you expect me to.”

Silence registers across the line as the barb settles, deep and seething. Underneath it is written the truth:  _ we’re not husband and wife anymore; we barely know each other at this point.  _

“I really need you back here to sign some papers for the house.” She says, “You do understand how the housing market works, right?” 

“Yes, I understand.” Bill replies, acidly. “I’ll be back in town on Friday.”

“And then what?”

“Back here. Until we catch him.”

“Hm.” Nancy mutters. “There’s always another  _ him _ , isn’t there?” 

Bill winces as the remark lashes across his conscience, intuitive in a way that she doesn’t yet understand. 

“He killed a twelve-year old, Nancy.” He says, “Raped her and beat her to death.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She says, sharply. “How many times do I have to tell you that? And please, do not make me sound cruel for telling you that. I get that your work is important, but so is your family - so is Brian. He needs you.”

_ If you thought so, you wouldn’t have signed the divorce papers.  _ Bill thinks, but that crosses a line and it’s a bit childish. A divorce doesn’t absolve him of his parental responsibility just like it doesn’t account for the desires he’s been trying with all his might to crush. 

“You called the BSU?” He says, sidling past the burning remark. 

“Yes.”

“Who did you speak to?”

“Wendy.” She says, “Why?” 

Bill clenches his jaw, and adjusts his grip on the receiver. 

“Oh.” Nancy says, her tone dropping like a stone plunking to the bottom of a lake. “So, you haven’t spoken to Ted about Brian  _ or  _ the divorce?” 

“No.” Bill says, stiffly. “It’s a bureaucracy, Nance. It’s not their job to have sympathy for him or me.” 

“He could give you some time off if you simply asked for it.”

“I don’t need time off.” Bill says, anger bursting past his chest and into his voice. “I need to keep working. It’s the only fucking thing you haven’t taken from me.”

Silence lands dense and suffocating across the static of the phone line. Bill can hear her draw in a hitched breath. She’s crying, and he can’t muster an apology. Behind the clench of his eyelids, he can see Mr. Taylor’s face grim and taut in the afternoon sunlight, refusing to watch his wife break down. Bitter and mean, no place for empathy. He wonders if Mary was just as sad and lonely as Brian, if she wondered whether or not her father loved her, if she still questioned it even as she was dying. 

Bill draws in a steadying breath. “I’m coming back on Friday.” He says, again. “I’ll stay the weekend, spend some time with him.” 

“Okay.” She whispers. 

“And I’ll get in touch with Tim.” Bill adds. 

She sniffs. “Good.”

“Go get some sleep. You sound exhausted.” 

“So do you.” She replies, her voice hitched with emotion. 

“Goodnight, Nance.”

“Goodnight.” 

They hang up, and Bill listens to the walls speak silent longing back at him. His chest knots, and he wishes he could scream or cry but the only urge that erupts freely is the desire to break something under his fist. He leaps to his feet, hands curled into fists at his sides. His body burns with some inordinate energy, an untapped vein of desperation so deep and dissecting that he can almost feel it tearing open his internal organs in it’s reach for the surface. 

He’s moving before he realizes it, before he knows the decision he’s consciously made. He strides across the room, throws the door open, and emerges into the dimly lit hall. The corridor is vacant, no other guests around to witness his self-control splintering and spiraling into nothing. 

Bill knocks on Holden’s door, and his brain catches up with his body alongside the vibration through his arm. Bracing a hand against the doorframe, he tries to ease his breathing and wrangle his emotions. He’s falling forward into what is likely a terrible mistake, but all he can see ahead is relief, an excision of this shame and need that has been plaguing him for weeks. 

The door eases open with a faint creak of hinges. Holden stands on the other side in his pajamas, his mouth half-parted in surprise, his eyes wide and bleeding needy honesty. 

Bill draws in a shaky breath, and tries to say something that comes out in a choked sigh. 

Holden lets the door fall all the way open. 

~

The way Bill’s body slams into him makes Holden feel a spark of life and bliss that he’s been void of for so long that it feels like a new sensation, a discovery of lips across his own and breath hot on his cheeks, fingers grasping his jaw with a possessive hunger that’s been muzzled for what feels like years. 

Bill nudges the door shut behind them, and drags Holden around to crowd him against the sleek wood. His mouth pins Holden there, taking utter control of the kiss, the angle, the speed. Holden can do but little but cling to Bill’s chest as his mouth goes raw and tingling beneath the angry stroke of lips and the prick of teeth. A whine surges up from his chest, colliding with the harsh grunt that’s vibrating across Bill’s tongue. 

Bill draws back abruptly, leaving Holden gasping breathlessly. 

The only light source is the moonlight spilling past the open curtains and bathing the gray-blue of Bill’s eyes in a milky haze. Holden can’t make out the tiny details of his face in the scarce light, but he can glimpse the shudder in his jaw and the glimmer of need in his eyes. 

“I’m not drunk.” Bill says, his voice a husky whisper. “Are you?”

Holden shakes his head, unable to craft a verbal reply past the need brewing on his tongue. 

“Good.” Bill mutters. 

He kisses Holden again, harder, a stamp of his lips and teeth. One hand strokes down Holden’s cheek, tracing the jut of his jawline before making its way along the curve of his throat. Holden’s pulse stammers before erupting into a euphoric drumbeat as Bill’s palm settles around his throat, big and warm, yet momentarily passive. 

Their mouths slide apart again, and breaths bluster back and forth in the tiny space bisecting their wet lips. 

“You’re sure you want this?” Bill asks, hesitant for the first time since Holden opened the door. 

“Yes.” Holden whispers, nodding eagerly. 

Bill’s gaze tracks across Holden’s trembling expression. The hand around his throat tightens incrementally while the other cradles his face, thumb grazing along his cheekbone. 

Holden swallows hard, his throat moving against the stationary grip of Bill’s palm.

“I-I want it like you said.” He murmurs, lifting his chin to indicate his compliance. “Please, Bill, don’t be gentle.”

Bill makes a pained sound in the back of his throat, and ducks his head. Holden sees his shoulders rise with a deep, shaky breath. Then he lifts his head, and smothers Holden with another kiss, this one tasting of unhinged desperation. 

He drags Holden away from the door, and loops one arm around his waist to lead them at a slow, staggered pace toward the bed. 

Legs trembling with the heady rush of adrenaline and arousal, Holden sinks willingly to the sheets, and lets his body go limp and pliant in Bill’s commanding grip. 

Bill crawls between Holden’s opening thighs, and the weight and breadth of him is suddenly greater than Holden had expected, much denser and more powerful than it feels when they’re side-by-side in a car or separated by a desk at work. His body nearly covers Holden’s entirely as he bends down to press a long, stroking kiss to his mouth. His hand circles Holden’s throat, pressing up against the thundering of his pulse. Nudging his thumb up underneath Holden’s chin, he forces his head back into a submissive angle at which Holden can only open his mouth to accept the sweep of his tongue. 

Holden pants, dizzy with need, as Bill’s mouth lifts. He opens his eyes in the moonlight to see Bill above him, the deep, hard angles of his face wreathed in shadow, only the pale glint of his eyes reaching out to communicate an intense hunger. 

He draws in a slow breath that’s deafening to Holden’s straining ears. His thumb grazes along the underside of Holden’s chin, against the ridge of his Adam’s apple, and to the left to locate the thump of Holden’s jugular. 

Holden gasps quietly as the grip tightens. Every inch of him jolts with need, but the echo lands solidly in his groin where his cock is throbbing wildly. Squirming, he moans softly against Bill’s palm. 

Bill’s nostrils flare and his brow furrows as he watches Holden’s expression shift from surprise to pleasure. 

“You said you think about it … about me.” He murmurs. “Is this what you think about?” 

Holden swallows hard, and nods. “Yes.”

Bill tightens his grip, and Holden feels his face flush with heat, blood trapped against the flesh and bone tourniquet. The grip slowly compresses his esophagus until he can only draw in tiny, gasped breaths and his pulse is roaring his ears. Moisture rushes to his eyelids, and his mouth and cheeks tingle. His chest tightens, breaths slowing to laborious stammers. The seconds pass in the beat of his heart raging in his ears, but just as darkness begins to creep along the corners of his vision, Bill’s hand retreats. 

Holden gasps in a deep, sputtering breath, forcing his struggling lungs to swell with fresh oxygen with a brutal thrust. He can almost feel the rush of blood surging past his throat to the rest of his body and his temples draining of his trapped, aching pulse. 

Everything sharpens. His throat aches but so does his cock, and it feels better than he had ever imagined. 

Bill’s hand is petting his cheek. “Is that how you want it?”

Holden inhales a wheezing hiccup, finding himself nodding despite the dizzy hum in his brain. 

Shifting down against him, Bill utters a groaning sigh when their hips collide. The layers of clothing can do little to conceal the severity of their need. Holden can feel the pulse of Bill’s cock against his own, the rigid length of him rutting forcefully into him until intense friction makes Holden utter a needy sob. 

“Please…” He mumbles, softly, his eyes slipping shut against the fierce arousal turning to an unbearable ache between his thighs. 

Bill adjusts his grip on Holden’s throat as he rests his forehead against his temple. 

“Take off your pants.” He whispers, his breath rasping hot across Holden’s cheek. 

Holden squeezes his eyes shut, struggling not to reveal just how undone he is by the simple command. His hands tremble as he reaches down to hook his thumbs on the waistband of the pajama pants. He gets them down around his thighs before Bill mutters the next urgent command. 

“Briefs too.”

Holden shudders. For a moment, shame and fear overwhelm him before the need burns stronger than both. He tugs the briefs away from his swollen cock. 

There’s a pause of silence above him, drawing his eyelids fluttering open. He looks up to see Bill’s gaze turned downward, taking in the engorged state of his cock, flexing against his belly with desperate throbs. 

“Fuck.” Bill whispers, a tremor lacing through the curse. 

His hand clamps around Holden’s throat, transferring a tremble from his skin into Holden’s. His other hand wanders down Holden’s chest and belly, stopping just short of where his cock writhing. 

“Give me your hand.” He says. 

Holden untangles his fingers from their grip on the bedsheets, and lifts his hand. Bill takes him by the wrist, and guides his hand to the pulsing shaft of his cock. 

A strangled moan erupts from Holden’s throat as Bill presses his palm over the inflamed flesh. His cock leaps against the touch, half-realized need sweeping in tingles through his belly.

Bill’s fingertips linger against Holden’s knuckles until he sees Holden take his cock in a firm grasp. They drift away, gently tugging his t-shirt away from his belly and ribs. 

Holden glances down at the exposed tremble of his belly, already imagining the wet heat of release dappling his skin. 

Bill fixes his hand in a firm grip around Holden’s throat, and drops a wet kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Go on.” He urges, his voice scraped gravel against Holden’s ear. “Show me how you do it when you’re thinking about me.”

Holden’s moan is mangled into a choked noise when Bill’s fist clamps down, quickly cutting off oxygen and even the slightest idea of protest. Blood surges through his veins, quick, hot and powerful, all of it seeming to pool either in his temples or his cock. 

Wrapping his fingers around his cock, Holden drags his hand up and down in a sloppy, shaking maneuver. His body cries out in pleasure as even the slightest touch makes his singing, taut nerves react as set aflame. 

Bill grunts a sound of satisfaction from above, and presses his mouth to Holden’s temple, barely a kiss, more a monitor on the thundering pulse contained there. 

“Good.” He mutters, the sound of his voice wandering in raspy pieces across Holden’s fracturing consciousness. “That’s good.”

Holden tries to moan, but only manages to choke as Bill’s fist squeezes around his neck. His hips lurch up from the mattress, bucking into the eager stroke of his hand. His skin is burning with friction, every inch of him following in hot pursuit. His head swims with need, bordering between conscious, biting pleasure and hazy, breathless euphoria. He can’t string together a single logical thought while the pleasure emerges, fierce and hungry from deep in his soft, vulnerable belly. His vision is swarming with black, and his face is hot, too hot to bear; he can feel tears swelling from the corners of his eyes, forced to the surface by the powerful grasp of Bill’s fist, but he doesn’t want to stop - not until he’s right on the edge of palpable danger.

Suddenly, the steady compress releases, and oxygen floods his lungs and brain. White flashes behind his eyelids, nearly painful with the abrupt rush of blood and air. His pulse hammers, and he hears himself gasping, choking, yet sobbing in pleasure. 

“Please … please-” He cries, his chest quivering with expansive breaths, his lungs revolting in anger at being robbed of oxygen. 

Bill’s thumb strokes his pounding pulse, letting Holden breathe for mere seconds before the grip tightens again, slowly and steadily. 

Holden gulps, pooled saliva catching in the back of his throat just as Bill’s grasp closes. He chokes, seeing stars, a meteor shower of white and black behind his slipping eyelids. His hand wavers against his cock, the determined pace going weak and disjointed while his brain verges on darkness. 

His eyes jolt open again when Bill’s hand clasps over his knuckles, encouraging the sloppy stroke of his hand. 

“C’mon, Holden.” He mutters, his whisper winding into Holden’s ear as if from a dream. “You’re so close. Keep going.” 

The iron grip on his throat goes passive, blood and breath rushing yet again to starved veins and lungs. The sudden burst of consciousness goes straight to Holden’s cock where brewing pleasure overflows, exploding into deep, forceful spasms of orgasm. 

Holden cries out hoarsely as the climax overwhelms him, dragging him undertow into a parallel sensation of breathless falling. His lungs are sucking in oxygen, but he feels like he can’t breathe, can’t move except for the jagged thrusts of his hips expelling pent-up need in fountains of milky release. White plasters behind his eyelids as pleasure echoes through his body, again and again, the force of it threatening to break him from the inside out. 

Just as he climbs to the pinnacle of pleasure, he feels it abruptly deflate. Sinking down against the sheets, he gasps in exhilarated breaths. His body feels melted and helpless, boneless and powerless. His muscles are jittery and humming, spent of adrenaline triggered by some deeply ingrained biological, survival response that should have overpowered his desire for Bill’s hand around his throat. 

Slowly, he opens his eyes. 

Bill is above him, the weight of his body against Holden’s side the only thing pinning down the fleeting, fractured molecules of his drained limbs. His gaze is concentrated on Holden’s throat where his thumb is gently stroking, a stark contrast to the crushing grip he’d applied only moments ago. A faint sigh leaves his lips, and Holden hears the click of his tongue as he swallows hard against his own mounting need. His eyes wander lower, down Holden’s sharply rising chest and quivering belly to where his orgasm and softening flesh is on display.

Holden’s face flushes hot despite the darkness blanketing his bare, spent skin. The raw, desperate rush of his need is over, and every second feels acute and fragile, a thin layer of glass set to break with the slightest pressure. 

Bill shifts against him, and Holden can feel the thick bulge of his erection trapped beneath layers of fabric. Grunting a muted sound of need, Bill rolls his hips back from Holden’s thigh, and reaches down to grasp his erection with a trembling fist. 

Holden swallows hard. There’s a dull ache in his throat, and he breathes shakily, the ghost impression of Bill’s hand staggering every inhale. 

“Here, let me.” His voice is a scraped, barely audible whisper. 

Bill’s hand drifts away from his trapped cock as Holden reaches over to unbutton his trousers. The sound of the zipper sliding open groans across the terse silence, eclipsed only by Bill’s muted curse. His hips curl impatiently into the languid pressure of Holden’s fingers pushing the fabric of the trousers aside to graze the pulsing length still clothed by the thin layer of his boxers. 

Holden’s hand trembles as his palm absorbs the tempo of enraged need twitching through Bill’s cock. He bites his lip in concentration, and carefully hooks his fingers beneath the elastic waistband. 

Lifting his hips from the sheets, Bill reaches down to assist Holden’s tugging fingers in getting both the boxers and trousers down around his knees. Bill’s swollen cock clears the fabric, and Holden’s gaze catches on the hard, thick length in the shadows, grateful for the darkness that hides the flush burning his cheeks. Despite the number of times he’s imagined it, his little fantasies pale in comparison to reality, to the heady weight of having Bill’s need right in front of him, within reach. 

Holden grabs onto the pulsing shaft before his hesitation can overwhelm him. 

Bill grunts quietly, and rolls in closer to Holden. His forehead rests against Holden’s, sharing the space of his stammered breaths. 

Holden closes his eyes as his fingers curl around Bill’s cock. Soft, hot skin stretches over engorged veins that pulse and squirm beneath the pressure of Holden’s hand, as if it has a life of its own, hungry with need neither of them can control. 

“Fuck, Holden.” Bill whispers, clutching his cheek. He presses a sloppy kiss to Holden’s mouth, breathing unevenly into the gesture. 

Holden drags his hand up and down tentatively, and feels Bill’s cock twitch violently against his palm. 

Bill draws in a gasping breath that tears their mouths apart. His head drops to Holden’s throat, mouth resting heavily against the knotted, aching spot where his fist had nearly pushed Holden past consciousness. The heat of his breath clouds against Holden’s pulse, another brand of asphyxiation that Holden leans into with a choked moan. 

He strokes Bill’s cock for a few more moments before his fingers lapse against the head that’s gently leaking predisposed pleasure. 

Bill’s head lifts slowly from the cradle of Holden’s throat, and he peers through the darkness with squinted eyes. 

“You’re stopping.” He mutters, his hips lurching into the passive clutch of Holden’s fingers. 

“I know.” Holden whispers. He draws in a deep breath. “I-I want to know what you taste like.”

They both pause while the insinuation settles damply into the stifled air. 

Bill nods, his thumb grazing the corner of Holden’s mouth. The agreement fights past a groan, “Yes.”

He sits up, and grasps Holden’s nape to pull him up from the sheets. 

Their noses bump as Holden shifts forward, grasping the undone collar of his shirt. 

“Where do you want me?” Holden whispers. 

Bill draws in a hitched breath, honesty suffocating beneath his breastbone for a long moment before he presses his eyes shut and nods toward the floor. 

Holden purses his lips over a moan.  _ On your knees, begging for it.  _ The self-fulfilling prophecy floods his veins like a drug, a rush that just talking about it could never have matched.

He slides off the bed to the floor while Bill shifts to the edge of the mattress, his trousers pooling at his ankles. Holden leans between his thighs, hands tentatively climbing Bill’s knees. 

Suddenly, Bill’s hand is against his nape, blunt, forceful fingers wrapped up in his hair, dragging him forward. 

Holden grasps onto the root of Bill’s cock as he opens his mouth, letting Bill’s powerful grip guide his stretched open lips over the head. The thick, hard flesh thrusts to the back of his tongue, filling his mouth, tapering off oxygen. Holden sucks in a breath through his nostrils as he tries to adjust his mouth around the girth. His body reacts before his mind can, and as Bill’s fist is dragging his mouth backwards again, he’s slobbering fresh saliva over the tip. 

He’s more prepared as his mouth slides down again, Bill’s cock feeding all the way to the back of his tongue. He tightens his lips, sucking down on as much of it as he can, uttering a vibrating groan into pulsing flesh. 

“Fuck…” Bill hisses from above, his fist tightening in Holden’s hair.

Holden closes his eyes, focusing on steadying his breathing through his nose while his mouth glides up and down the swollen, throbbing length. The taste of flesh and the hint of salt fills his mouth, a potent, heady mix that dissolves in his bloodstream and goes straight to his head. His choked throat relaxes as saliva streams down Bill’s cock, past his lips, over his knuckles gripped at the base. He bobs his head faster, slipping into a quick rhythm that has Bill’s cock rubbing his lips raw. 

Bill groans, his hips shuddering under Holden’s eager ministrations. He grasps Holden’s head with both hands, one firmly gripped at his nape while the other strokes through the disheveled curls at his crown. 

“That’s good.” He mutters, his voice raspy and slurred with pleasure. “Just like that.”

Holden hums a responding affirmation around the thick weight of Bill’s cock filling his mouth. He reaches up to clutch Bill’s chest, bracing himself as his jaw begins to ache and his brain goes hazy with lack of oxygen. He keeps forgetting to breathe through his nose, too caught up in the moment to remember something so simple yet deliberate. Distracted, his focus trips upward, enamored of Bill’s every flinch and groan of pleasure, only to be jolted back down again when Bill’s fingers flex around the back of his neck. 

None of his fantasies had managed to shade the deep shadows of this moment just right, to cast the moonlight across Bill’s stricken expression of pleasure the way it is now; his mind could not have imagined the ache of his knees digging into the carpet, nor the strain of his throat taking Bill’s cock over and over again. The small details of Bill’s nails digging into his nape, the salty taste of his need, the pleasured groans erupting from his chest had eluded Holden’s constructed ideas of how this act might play out. Maybe all he had gotten right was his own tremulous need, cowering beneath the magnitude of his dangerous desires, his willingness to do whatever Bill asked, and his desperation to have Bill in any way - even if it means walking behind someone else and picking up the pieces; because clearly something had driven Bill to this moment, and it hadn’t only been his own conflicted desires. 

Holden shoves the thought from his mind as Bill’s hand urges against the nape. He tries to catalogue every detail, but the moments are slipping past him like spilt milk, too many to remember in vivid detail. What he wants to remember is how Bill came apart in his hands, but all he can focus on is the slick sound of Bill’s cock fucking into his mouth chafing against the nighttime silence of the hotel room, filling the tiny spaces cast in pewter moonlight with a vision of dirty, desperate need and the muted dialogue of shared satisfaction.

Bill mutters a choked sound of arousal as he thrusts his hips up against the descent of Holden’s mouth. 

Holden clings to Bill’s thighs, trying not to gag as the powerful thrust of Bill’s hips shoves his cock up against Holden’s throat. He comes up gasping, barely managing a strangled moan before Bill’s cock fills his mouth again. The deliberate pace strips away whatever meager control Holden had once had over the encounter, turning his mouth to nothing more than a compliant, slick opening for Bill’s cock to rut into. He tries not to choke as Bill’s need compounds, going unraveled and sloppy for a long series of swift thrusts before pulling back abruptly. 

Holden gasps in a breath as Bill’s fist yanks him back by the hair, and hot, slick release spatters his cheeks. He catches a brief glimpse of Bill’s expression twisting into one of absolute pleasure just before his eyes slam shut against the cum showering his face. Most of it hits him across the mouth and cheeks, but he feels a few stray drops dribbling down his forehead and the bridge of his nose. The slick heat spills down his chin and throat, drizzling his raw, gasping throat with the enormity of Bill’s satisfaction. 

His eyelids flutter open as Bill’s groans ease, and his fist softens in Holden’s hair. Through a half-shut gaze, he glimpses Bill’s head bent down, his chest rising in hitched breaths. His hand is limp against his wilted cock, fingers glistening with the same release coating Holden’s cheeks. He lets out a heavy sigh, and sinks back against the mattress. 

Holden’s breathing has yet to slow. As the roar of blood in his ears eases, he hears himself drawing in raspy gasps. His eyes are moist from nearly choking, and he’s drenched in his own cum and Bill’s - used and filthy, just like he’d wanted. 

Dropping his forehead to Bill’s knee, he curls his fingers around Bill’s calf and clings on with trembling fingers.

He’s shaking as he realizes he’s gotten everything he wanted - shaking because he’s never felt so satisfied in his life; shaking because there’s an innate danger in knowing what you want and never planning past that moment of completion, and because he has no idea what’s coming next. 

~

Bill takes his time searching deep within his chest for the will to move from the bed sheets. His body is limp and humming with satisfaction, drained of a pent-up need that he’d been repressing for so long that it had nearly exploded from inside him. He’d much rather stay here for the rest of the night, weighed down by Holden’s skin against his own, but he has to move, has to face reality - that what they’ve done is unforgivable, unforgettable at the very least. 

After what feels like close to fifteen minutes, he sits up and displaces Holden’s head from his knee. 

Holden falls back against the carpet on his backside, gazing up at Bill in the dim light of the room with wide, tremulous eyes. Perhaps he’s expecting rage; in the moment, Bill can’t muster it, at least not at Holden. If he’s angry with anyone, it should be directly solely at himself, his own weaknesses, his own fucking short-sightedness. 

Grabbing his pants from around his ankles, Bill gets up, and shuffles across the carpet to the bathroom. The row of lights above the mirror plasters the gaudy pink on his cheeks in platinum. Averting his gaze from his reflection, he turns on the faucet to wash his hands. 

As he bends down to put his boxers and trousers back on, he glimpses Holden’s stocking feet from the corner of his eye. 

Stifling silence envelops the bathroom as Holden walks to the sink, and turns the faucet back on. Bending over the counter, he washes his face and neck. 

Bill straightens, dragging his zipper shut with a forceful yank. Frustration stirs in his chest as he watches Holden clean away the evidence of his ugly needs. He’s always felt frustrated when he looks at Holden for varying and numerous reasons, but now that feeling intensifies to a dull ache, like a knife pressed against the rush of his pulse. 

Holden grabs the hand towel from the counter, and pats his face dry. The intense blue of his eyes peeks over the white fabric, cutting into Bill via the mirror. 

Bill swallows hard. “You know this was a mistake, right?”

Holden’s mouth emerges from the towel, and he lets out a sigh. “Probably.”

“Probably?” Bill echoes, scoffing quietly. “We’re men, Holden. We’re FBI agents. We’re-”  
“So.” Holden says, turning around to lean his hips against the sink counter. 

Bill stops, a frown curling his brow. The defiance in Holden’s voice is wildly misplaced, but it always is. 

“Who’s stopping us?” Holden asks directly, then glances away as he mutters more quietly, “Expect maybe you.”

“Jesus.” Bill says, bracing his hands against his hips. “You always do this.”

“Do what?” 

“You want to have your cake and eat it too.” Bill says, “The world doesn’t work like that, Holden. There’s consequences for everything. Especially something like this.”

Holden nods, his jaw clenching. Bill can tell he knows it, but maybe that he’s quietly denying it, clinging onto something good while it lasts. He wishes he could do the same for just one night, but he’s a realist, perhaps brutally so. What does a few more hours of delusion mean if the sunrise always delivers the same raw truth?

“This was about Nancy, wasn’t it?” Holden asks, softly. 

Bill glances away as heat lances his cheeks. 

Holden lets out a choked laugh. “Of course it was. I don’t know why I thought any different.”

“You said you wanted it.” Bill replies, defensively. 

Holden’s mouth purses. Bill can see his eyes beginning to shimmer. 

“Yeah.” Holden mutters, pushing away from the sink. “I wanted you to want me.”

Bill opens his mouth to offer a reply, but Holden has already left the bathroom - and whatever he might have scraped together would have been inadequate, most likely dishonest. He can’t say what he truly wants to say. There’s a danger in admitting that some version of himself buried deep down had wanted Holden all along and that Nancy had simply been a trigger, a finger pressing down on a loaded gun. If he said it, then what? They have some type of relationship? They keep fucking each other like that kind of behavior won’t eventually bring a whole load of bad shit raining down on them? Nothing about tonight was sustainable so he might as well not say it all. 

Bill draws in a deep breath, and casts a critical gaze at his reflection in the mirror before turning to leave the bathroom. 

Holden is sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his trousers back on. 

“We should both get some sleep.” Bill says, “We’ve got surveillance starting tomorrow. And we should bring your idea about the press conference to Crawford first thing.”

“Yeah.” Holden agrees, keeping his gaze focused on the carpet.

“The sooner we finish this thing up and get home the better.” Bill says. 

Holden rises from the bed, and tugs his trousers up around his waist. 

“Goodnight, Bill.” He says, quietly. 

Bill clenches his jaw. “Goodnight.”

Once he’s back in his own room, Bill turns on the television to fill the damning silence. Sinking down against the pillow, he lights a cigarette and stares blankly at the re-run of  _ Gunsmoke  _ playing out in grainy black-and-white across the screen. Despite the clamor in his mind, his body’s deflation of post-sex bliss drags him towards exhaustion. He drops his cigarette into the ashtray, and buries his head in the pillows. His limbs seem to melt into the sheets as he slips into sleep, dreaming of Holden’s eyes, his hands his mouth, the world falling away into pleasure. 


	4. Chapter 4

Crawford accepts Holden’s plan to have the mothers go on live television to plead for the life of the missing girl almost immediately. Much to Bill’s surprise, the women agree to do the press conference nearly as quickly as the detective.

The next two days are a flurry of preparations. He and Holden spend five hours crafting the script for the mothers to read, tweaking each and every sentence to elicit the response they’re looking for; meanwhile, Crawford wrangles the media, which is eager to get any information on the case that they can. With little resistance from any corner, the conference is approved without delay. 

Bill is grateful for the time crunch. The rush to get the press conference organized before another body turns up dead gives him little time to think about what happened between him and Holden, even less time to act on his guilt-ridden machinations; however, it doesn’t release him from the urge to watch Holden closely, to dissect every remark and gesture, to see the red backdrop of lust shading each exchange between them. Holden is focused on the work, but Bill, whether through imagination or not, can glimpse the underbelly of need quivering just beneath the staunch professionalism. 

The event is set up in the conference room of the precinct the following day. Four different news stations arrive with cameras and microphones to televise the mothers’ address live to audiences at home. 

Bill and Holden are shunted to the back row while the reporters crowd at the front where the four mothers are seated at a long folding table with Detective Crawford, the chief of police, and the mayor. 

“I didn’t know the mayor was coming.” Bill says, leaning back in his chair to light a cigarette. 

“It’s a good thing.” Holden says, “It will elevate the importance of the killer in his mind.” 

Bill takes a drag of his cigarette. “It’s a lot of hoopla for a slight chance that he might turn himself in.”

“We have to take every chance we can get.”

“I sure as hell hope it works.”

“Bill,” Holden says, his eyes somber as he glances over his shoulder at Bill’s tepid expression clouded in smoke. “It’ll work.”

His hand slips from his knee to Bill’s, barely a graze of reassuring contact, but it has enough impact to make Bill’s pulse leap. Bill nearly pulls his knee away, but the fear that someone else might see the overreaction - and his own irrational desires - keeps his foot bolted in place against the linoleum. 

Holden’s fingers linger for a scarce few seconds before drifting away. His gaze turns stoically back to the mothers. 

Bill shifts uncomfortably in his chair, mentally attributing the sweat itching under his shirt to the summer humidity combined with the stuffiness of the crowded room. 

The buzz of conversation in the room settles down as the police chief leans into the mike to ask for everyone’s attention. He introduces everyone at the table before urging the mother of the missing girl to take over. 

Holden leans back in his chair as the woman begins to read from the script in a soft, trembling voice. His shoulder comes to rest against Bill’s, the contact faint yet deliberate. 

Gazing discreetly at Holden from the corner of his eye, Bill notes the faint bruise peeking just above Holden’s collar. Someone else might have mistaken it for a hickey or even a shadow. Bill wonders if it still hurts, but more than that, he wants to run his thumb across the tender spot, deepen the fading colors from dusky purple back to broken blue. 

He tears his eyes away, biting the inside of his cheek. The faint pain barely manages to shear past the need coiling in his belly, reminding him of the present, of where they are, that they have a job to do, that a girl is missing. 

He’s due back in Virginia tomorrow for Brian’s therapy appointment, and he’s looking forward to the absence, the chance to perhaps clear his head of all these deranged needs clouding his mind. Maybe if he looks into his son’s eyes, he’ll remember where he veered off course and find his way back to sanity again. 

The press conference ends with four crying mothers and rapid shutter-clicks of cameras. It’s salacious fodder for the evening news cycle that Bill imagines they’ll be playing repeatedly for the next few weeks. He can only hope the killer is as enthralled as the rest of the masses.

That evening, while most of the officers in the bullpen are discussing shifts to watch the dump sites, Bill gathers his things from his desk to head for the airport. 

“Headed out?” Holden asks, glancing up from his case file. 

“Yep.” Bill says, “I told Nancy I would stay the weekend, spend some time with Brian.”

“Okay.” Holden nods, his gaze lingering softly as Bill swings his jacket over his shoulders. 

“Maybe by the time I get back, your plan will have worked and we can all go home.” Bill says, mustering a faint smile. 

“I hope so.” 

Bill turns to leave, but Holden stands, clearing his throat. 

“Hey, why don’t I drive you to the airport?” He says. 

“Oh, you don’t have to-”

“It’s okay. I want to.” Holden says, grabbing his keys from his desk. 

He marches past Bill towards the door, leaving Bill no choice but to follow him. They emerge onto the sidewalk outside of the precinct where the sunlight is dying quickly, striping the sky with swaths of pink and purple. The humidity has tapered off just enough to be comfortable, and the air hums with the whine of crickets. 

Bill swallows hard as he follows Holden to the car. They haven’t been alone since that night, have barely talked about anything except the case. He’s been doing his best to conceal what happened and move on, and he’d thought Holden was doing the same; but he can sense the undercurrent of need and honesty threatening to break free - and he’s like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam to hold back the tide while Holden is coming at the crumbling brick with a swinging sledgehammer. 

Bill ducks into the passenger’s seat of the car, and pulls the door shut behind him. 

Holden silently guides the car away from the curb, and follows the three turns it takes to get them to the freeway. As they merge into afternoon traffic, he flexes his fingers around the steering wheel and draws in a deep breath. 

Bill digs his cigarettes out of his pocket, and lights one with trembling fingers. He cracks the window to expel smoke, and the howl of the wind interrupts the rigid silence. 

“Bill, I-”

“Is there something you-”

They both begin to speak at once, falling silent as the strangled words clash against one another.

Bill shoots a sharp glance across the car to see Holden peeking back at him, eyes bouncing between him and the road. 

“Sorry, go ahead.” Bill says, averting his gaze to the fine layer of dust coating the dashboard. 

Holden clears his throat. “I … I thought I would understand after, but I don’t.”

“Understand what?”

“We study this stuff, Bill. It’s supposed to make sense. At the very least, we  _ try  _ to make sense of it.” Holden says, his voice strained. “But I don’t know what it means anymore than you do.”

Bill focuses his gaze out the window, and takes a hard drag of his cigarette. The horizon is oversaturated with melted, yellow sunlight while the sky overhead clings to darkening blue. He wishes he could escape this car and flee into the fading light, but he’d let Holden corner him into this conversation.

“I don’t know about you, but …” Holden sighs, bracing his hand around the steering wheel. “I still … want it. I still want you.”

Bill’s chest flares with heat, so hard it hurts. He wants it to be anger, but it isn’t. It’s need - debased, cruel, uncaring of his good intentions. Reveling in the fact that he hasn’t entirely turned Holden away with the raw ugliness of his desires. 

“Can you say something?” Holden asks, “Please, Bill. Anything. I don’t care if you’re mad.” 

Bill expels a forceful breath of smoke, and shakes his head. He rubs his fingertips between his eyebrows until it produces a dull ache, but he can’t mold the tangle of frustration and longing in his chest into something verbal. 

Holden lets out a quiet sigh. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it. I can’t-”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” Bill interrupts, swinging his gaze back to Holden’s alarmed expression. His blood runs hot, rage and desire competing, both of them trying their hardest to burn him to the ground. 

“I don’t know. I just thought I should tell you.” Holden says, cutting him a wounded glare.

Bill takes a hard drag of his cigarette, shaking his head. “I can’t do this right now. I’m trying to do my job. My wife is divorcing me. My son needs psychological help. Ted expects the study to stay on track while we’re spending weeks at a time on consult. I can’t be whatever it is you want me to be, too.”

“I know. I don’t expect you to.” Holden says, “But you can’t deny how good it felt, how-”

“I’m not doing this.” Bill mutters, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “I’m not going to sit here and debate whether what happened was right or wrong when it’s clear to everyone except you which one it is.”

“So, you’re just going to lump us in with Jones and Casto and the rest?” Holden says, his voice taking on a thread of anger for the first time. 

“What’s wrong is wrong.”

“So, it’s all just black and white?”

“Some things are.” 

“No.” Holden says, shaking his head. “It has to be more complex than that, Bill. You’ve been studying human behavior for almost twenty years. Please tell me that you’ve achieved more insight than that.” 

“Sure, we can debate the complexities of sexuality and fetish all day long, but I’ll tell you one thing - I’m not a faggot, Holden. Maybe you are, but I’m not.”

Silence settles like barbed wire, needling into Bill’s taut neck with the stinging prickle of regret the moment the words leave his mouth. He can almost sense Holden’s recoil though he doesn’t move physicality save for the squeeze of his knuckles around the wheel. Instantly, he wants to take it back, but he can’t - it’s already written into the air between them, harsh and selfish. 

They don’t speak again until Holden pulls the car along the curb of the airport. Bill braces a hand over his mouth, watching the people around them wishing their loved ones farewell and dragging suitcases into the airport. There’s a sour taste in the back of his throat, and he doesn’t want to leave just yet because leaving might seal torn flesh over planted poison. 

“Maybe you’re right.” Holden says, quietly. “Maybe I expect too much - especially from other people.”

Bill glances over at him, but Holden is staring out his window. 

He checks his watch, and draws in a deep breath. “Look, I have to go-”

“Then go.” 

Bill clenches his jaw. He rips off his seatbelt, and shoves the door open with his shoulder. He swings his bag over his shoulder, and pauses with his hand wrapped around the car door. His chest tugs painfully, and for once, he listens. 

Bending down to look into the car again, he catches Holden’s sidelong gaze. 

“I’m sorry.” He says. 

Holden’s eyes soften just before Bill leans back and pushes the door shut. He doesn’t give himself the chance to linger any further. Hoisting his bag, he marches up the sidewalk, and past the sliding doors of the airport where the breeze of air conditioning hits his flushed cheeks. It’s a long walk to his gate, and he’s already late. 

~

Bill and Nancy don’t talk about their argument on the phone. Standing on the sidewalk outside of the therapist’s office, she tells him that she and some of her friends are planning on getting manicures while he watches Brian tomorrow. He wishes her a good time. 

That evening, he’s woken from a dead sleep by the telephone by his bed ringing. Groaning, he shoves a hand from under the sheets to grab the receiver. 

“Hello?” He mumbles. 

“Hi, Bill.” Holden says, “Sorry to call you so early.”

“Holden.” Bill mutters, cracking open bleary eyelids to glimpse the clock on the nightstand. “It’s fucking … it’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“You’re not going to believe this.” Holden says, sounding far too peppy for the middle of the night. 

“What?” Bill asks, “What couldn’t wait till morning?” 

“We just got word that a truck driver found a young girl walking down the side of the road around midnight tonight. He took her to the hospital, and she reported that she’d been abducted.” 

Bill shoves back the sheets, and sits upright. Sleep flees his mind as the impact of Holden’s words settle. 

“Was it her? The missing girl?”

“Yes. Debbie Marsh.” Holden says, “She told the nurse everything, including the name of the man who took her.” 

“Do you have a warrant?” 

“We’re working on it. We just got the call about half an hour ago.” Holden says, “Bill, she says it was the youth pastor at their church.”

Bill pauses, clutching the phone in his fist. Mrs. Taylor’s face appears in the back of his mind, horrified at the thought that someone from church could do such a thing. 

“Christ.” Bill says, “It’s always the person the community least expects.”

“Maybe they didn’t expect it, but someone else did.” Holden says, “Two years ago he was accused of molesting a young girl down in Fayette, but the charges were dropped. When we were looking at predators, we were only searching for convictions.” 

“Damn.” Bill says, “What happened with the girl? Did she escape?”

“That’s the best part.” Holden says, “She says he let her go.” 

“So, your plan worked.” 

“Like a charm.” Holden says, “We’re bringing him in tonight, and I really would like to talk to him.” 

Bill closes his eyes, pressing his fingertips to his forehead. “I should be there, too.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s your weekend with Brian.” Holden says, “I could do it on my own if-”

“No, Ted will expect me to be there.” Bill says, “I’ll get on the phone with the airport, get a flight booked as soon as I can.” 

“You want me to wait for you?” 

“If you can rein in Crawford long enough.” Bill says, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. 

“Okay.” Holden says, “I’ll see you soon, then?”

“Yeah.” Bill says. He climbs to his feet, wincing at the exhausted stiffness in his limbs. Silence hums across the line for a moment, and Bill sighs. “Holden?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Good work.” 

“Thanks. See you at the airport.” 

“Okay. Bye.” 

Bill hangs up the phone, and scrubs a hand over his face. He dials the airport first. Once he has his flight arranged, he swallows down the bile at the thought of calling Nancy and not only waking her in the middle of the night, but also ruining her weekend plans by deserting his babysitting duties. 

He gets dressed and heads for the airport, thinking he’ll call her from the payphone once he’s at the gate. One more hour of waiting won’t hurt. Maybe by then, he’ll have a proper apology planned, and an explanation that doesn’t sound like evasion - that doesn’t sound like he’d rather be facing down a killer than spending time with his own son. 

~

At five a.m., it’s too early to rent a car. Bill exits the Hunstville airport to see Holden’s car parked along the curb, idling in the early morning twilight. When he gets into the passenger’s seat, Holden offers him a paper cup of coffee from the gas station. 

“Thanks.” Bill says, “I have a feeling I’m going to need this. What’s the status with the warrant.”

“We had the wake the judge, but he was happy to get us a warrant for the arrest of the youth pastor - his name is David Beal - and a warrant to search his home and vehicle.” Holden says, “They’re holding him now, waiting for us.”

“Let’s go, then.” Bill says, motioning at the freeway in the distance. 

Holden steers the car away from the curb, and they’re headed back to the precinct along the sleepy, deserted highway in just a few minutes. 

“Here’s everything we have from his house and car so far.” Holden says, grabbing the case file tucked into the middle console and handing it off to Bill. “Child porn, girls’ nightgowns, photographs, ropes.” 

“He didn’t try to conceal any of it.” Bill says, “He could have at least burned some of the evidence after releasing the girl.”

“Crawford said he complied willingly when they showed up with the arrest warrant.”

“What about the girl?” Bill asks. 

She’s thirteen years old, and get this - she attended the church where Beal is the youth pastor.” 

“Let me guess. So did all the others?” Bill asks, flipping open the file. 

“All except the first one, Mary.” Holden says. 

“She’s the exception.” Bill says, “He took her first because she couldn’t be tied to him. As he continued to kill, he got more relaxed, abducting easy, within-reach targets.” 

Holden waves a finger at the file in Bill’s lap. “Look at the photos of Debbie. He hadn’t harmed a hair on her body yet except for some minor ligature marks on her wrists and ankles.”

“She’s been missing for a week.” Bill says, “What the hell was he doing with her?” 

“According to Debbie, they were playing house.” Holden says. 

“What?” Bill asks, a scowl knitting his brow. 

“That’s right.” Holden says, “She says he made her breakfast, played with her, watched TV … did  _ Bible studies _ , for God’s sake. The furthest he got was photographing her in her underwear.”

“He was trying to curb his urges.” Bill says, shuffling through the pictures of the young girl. “Pretending it was just like Sunday school.”

“There is plenty of rape in the Bible, that’s for sure.” Holden muses. 

“You think he thinks God wanted him to do it?”

“Or Satan.” Holden says, “He was obviously still clinging to his beliefs despite what he’s done. Another interesting thing - he hasn’t asked for a lawyer.”

“He did let the girl go.” Bill says, “Maybe he’s ready to give up.”

“I guess we really will be back home as quickly as you hoped.” Holden says. 

Bill takes a sip of his coffee, and leans back in his chair with a sigh. He hadn’t called Nancy from the airport like he’d promised himself.

“Bill,” Holden says, quietly. 

Bill can feel his gaze shifting across the car, assessing him silently yet critically. 

“I’m sorry to take you away from your family on the weekend.” Holden says, his voice holding a disingenuous thread that’s barely noticeable. 

“It was my choice.” Bill says, “This is important.” 

“More important than them?” 

“Look, don’t bust my chops about it.” Bill says, tilting his head back against the seat cushion. “I’m going to hear plenty of it from Nancy.”

“You haven’t told her yet?” Holden asks, his head swiveling in Bill’s direction before jumping back to the road. 

“I’ll call her from the precinct.” Bill says, “I didn’t want to wake her in the middle of the night.”

Holden falls silent. His gaze is fixed on the road, but Bill can tell there’s a thousand thoughts swarming inside his head. Bill winces thinking of their last interaction on Thursday night. Somehow, when it comes to Holden, he always ends up saying things he doesn’t mean, or saying too many things that he’d meant to keep a secret. 

Once they reach the police station, Bill asks Crawford if he could borrow his office to make a personal call. 

“We’ve been waiting three hours to question Beal.” Crawford points out. 

“I’m sorry. It’ll be just a minute.” Bill says. 

Crawford sighs. “Okay, go ahead.” 

Bill ducks into the office, and sits down on the edge of Crawford’s desk while he dials. The line rings half a dozen times before Nancy’s tired voice filters across the static. 

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.” Bill says, swallowing back the nausea rising in his stomach. 

“Bill? It’s so early. What time is it?”

“Past five.” Bill says, “I’m sorry to wake you, but … I’ve been called back.”

There’s a beat of silence, and he can hear the tension building. “Called back?” She echoes, frustration brewing beneath her tone. “To Alabama?” 

“Yes.” Bill says, “But the good news is that we’re pretty sure we got the guy. I should be home for good in a few days.”

Silence again. He hears the rustle of bed sheets as she sits up, and he can imagine her in the half-light of some distant bedroom, her hair disheveled, her eyes wrinkled and tired from lack of sleep and verging tears. 

“Okay.” She says at last, more of a sigh than an acknowledgment. 

“Okay?” He repeats, distrusting her lackluster response. 

“Yes, okay.” She says, “Fine. Whatever, Bill. At this point, I don’t know why I even try.”

“Nance-”

“I’m sure you’re busy, so go.” Nancy says, “Go save the day. I can reschedule my plans.”

Bill clenches his jaw, and rubs hard fingertips across the bridge of his nose. He glances past the blinds over Crawford’s office windows to see Holden standing in the circle with the rest of the task force, discussing the pictures of the new girl - the survivor - posted on the cork board beside the others. 

“She lived.” He says quietly. 

“What?” Nancy whispers. 

“The girl that was missing. She lived.” Bill says, “I didn’t save the day. She did. And now we have the guy because of her.” 

Silence stretches across the line, and he wishes she could see his point of view, even for a second. 

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.” Bill says, finally. “But I’m sorry I ruined your plans. I’ll talk to you later.”

Without waiting for her to reply, he hangs up the telephone and draws in a deep breath. Leaving his hesitation inside Crawford’s office, he marches out into the bullpen to address Holden. 

“Come on, let’s do this.” He says, grabbing the case file from his desk. 

“Are you sure you don’t want to discuss it more?” Holden asks. 

“No, I’m good.” Bill says, “Let’s put this to bed.” 

~

The inside of the interrogation room at the Decatur precinct looks smaller from the inside than it does from the other side of the one-way glass where the rest of the task force is undoubtedly crowded around to watch Bill and Holden engage with Beal. The cement brick walls are painted a drab yellow color that appears garish beneath the canned lights overhead, and the dented, metal table bolted to the floor takes up most of the space. 

Holden circles the desk, assessing their subject with a critical eye. 

Beal is nondescript. Average height, average weight, mousy brown hair combed over a receding hairline, glasses sliding down the sweaty bridge of his nose. The unkempt mustache makes his small chin appear even smaller. 

He glances up sharply when Bill and Holden enter the interrogation room, but he doesn’t squirm or become jittery. He sits perfectly still, watching with dull brown eyes as Holden sets the tape recorder in the center of the table.

Holden sits down, and takes his time laying open the case file in front of him with the dead girls’ pictures piled on top. He turns on the tape recorder. 

“Mr. Beal, my name is Holden Ford.” Holden says, “This is my partner, Bill Tench. We’re with the FBI.”

There’s a minute twitch in Beal’s jaw. 

“I understand that you’ve waived your right to an attorney.” Holden says. 

Beal nods. 

“Can you say it aloud for the tape recorder?”

“Yes. I have.” Beal says. He has a thick Southern accent. 

“Then you understand that anything in this conversation can be used in trial?”

“I understand.” 

“Good.” Holden says, “Then I’ll cut right to the chase.” 

“Did I kill those girls?” Beal says, leaning forward to brace his elbows on the table. He sniffs, and lowers his head. “Yes, I did.”

“You’re confessing?” Bill asks, sounding as surprised as Holden feels. 

Beal rubs a hand over his face, a shiver running through his shoulders. “Yes. So what's next? You take me away, lock me up, sentence me to death?” 

“Eventually.” Holden says, “But not that quickly.”

Beal nods. “Right. I have to write something down, don’t I? A written confession?”

“Yes.” Holden says, slowly. “But, first we have some questions.”

“What questions?”

“Well, we’re from a particular unit with the FBI.” Holden says, “We study men like you, who have killed multiple times.”

Beal purses his lips. Holden can see the thought processing behind his eyes. He’s a statistic. His crimes are going to be published for the world to see. 

“I didn’t  _ want  _ to kill them.” He says, his composed facade crumbling as he lowers his head to his hands. “God forgive me.”

Holden exchanges a quick glance with Bill. 

Bill sighs, and lights a cigarette. Skepticism brews in the ripple across his jawline and squint of his eyes. They’ve seen tears like this before. 

“But, you didn’t just kill them, did you, David?” Holden asks, softly.

Beal sucks in a breath, and pulls his hands away from his face. He stares at the dungy, metal edge of the table. 

“You violated them.” Bill says, “Children. Young girls whose parents expected you to protect and lead them.”

“I tried to stop it.” Beal whispers, “With prayer, pleading God to not make me this way. But I was gripped by this insatiable desire to … I let it in somehow. I opened myself up to that kind of evilness. It must have been so long ago, when I was a child. I can’t remember a day where I didn’t wake up with these thoughts in my head …” 

“Let what in?” Holden asks. 

“The Devil.” 

“The Devil, really?” Bill says, “You expect us to believe that you were possessed?”

“Not possessed.” Beal says, lifting his head to regard Bill with distant, misty eyes. “Not by a demon or anything so theatrical. But by an idea, a feeling. A temptation. The way Jesus was tested for forty days and forty nights in the desert. Only I succumbed, Agent Tench.”

“You know what that sounds like to me?” Bill says, taking a drag of his cigarette and forcefully tapping ashes to the floor. “A whole bunch of horseshit. Why don’t you just admit right now that you took your position in the church for the sole purpose of getting young, impressionable girls to follow at your beck and call, to trust you implicitly?”

“Bill.” Holden whispers, casting him a worried glance. 

Bill leans back in his chair, exhaling smoke. His gaze doesn’t leave Beal’s. 

Holden clears his throat. “You said you’ve always had these urges. Do you remember a point in your childhood where they began?”

“No, it’s just always been there.” Beal says, his distracted gaze wandering back to Holden’s.

“But it didn’t escalate to murder until now.” Holden says. 

Beal nods. “There was a girl … In Fayette.” 

“That was almost two years ago, right?” Holden asks, consulting the notes in his file. “You were accused of molesting a girl named Marcy Hampton, twelve years old at the time.”

“Yes.” Beal says, “My wife left me. I had to file for bankruptcy after the divorce. When I came here, I thought it was going to be a fresh start, but-”

“Mary.” Holden murmurs, sliding free a photograph of the first victim. “She was the first.”

Beal exhales a fond chuckle as his gaze falls on the school picture of Mary. She was a plain little girl with short, feathered blond hair and an overbite. But Holden thinks there’s something sad and intriguing about her eyes, an old soul looking out from a young body. Maybe that’s what Beal saw too. 

He slides the photograph across the table to Beal. 

“She didn’t attend your church.” Holden says, “So how did it happen?”

“She just … fell into my lap.” Beal says, reaching out a trembling hand to touch Mary’s cheek in the photograph. “She was running away from home.”

“She told you that?” Bill asks, distrustfully. 

Holden glances over to meet Bill’s critical gaze, his stomach gripped by a sudden nausea. He can see her mother’s face in the back of his mind, her life destroyed by loss - a loss begun by a little girl’s bolt for freedom. 

“Yes.” Beal says, “She was looking for someone to love her, to take care of her. I picked her up and took her home.”

“She went with you willingly?” Bill asks, his voice dwindling to a whisper. 

“I bought her some candy from the gas station.” Beal says, “She liked that. She said her dad never bought her candy.”

“You earned her trust.” Holden says, “Then you did this.” 

He pulls out another picture, this one of Mary’s dead body, her face mangled and bloody. 

Beal looks away, shaking his head. His leg bounces nervously. 

“I couldn’t help myself.” Beal says, his voice trembling. “It was like this powerful thing came over me, like I wasn’t in control of my body anymore. I could see myself kneeling over her, hitting her again … and again. I could see the blood, but everything had gone numb - I couldn’t feel my hands, just the rush of my blood, this feeling of power in my chest.”

“Power.” Bill echoes. “You call beating a twelve-year old to death power?”

Beal glances up, and his eyes are blank. “In a way, Agent Tench. She was unhappy, and I set her free."


	5. Chapter 5

It’s past nine o’clock in the morning by the time Bill and Holden finish their conversation with Beal. He’d answered every question they asked, filling up both sides of the cassette tape and half of another. Holden is eager to listen to tapes once he’s had a chance to eat something, get some rest, and a shower to wash away the lingering film of unsettled nausea that comes with listening to a man detail how he raped and killed three young girls. 

Once he and Bill file their final reports, there isn’t much left to do in Decatur. They decline Crawford’s offer of having drinks later that night. The flight home is already booked, and despite Holden’s dedication to their work, he’s ready to sleep in his own bed again. 

The day dawns with summer radiance, cloudless skies, sunshine, and birdsongs. When Bill and Holden exit the Decatur precinct for the last time, the world looks like any other ordinary day, one filled with possibility to the eyes of a stranger unacquainted with the details of what they had just witnessed. 

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.” Holden says, “You want to get breakfast before we head back to the hotel?”

“Sure.” Bill says. 

Holden drives them a block over to the diner where the breakfast rush has begun to dwindle. They find a booth seat by the window where golden morning sunlight spills across the aged, pitted formica tabletop. 

The waitress stops by to pour them both coffee, and leaves them to look over the menus. 

Holden peeks over the plastic top of his menu at Bill who is hunched over the table, reviewing the breakfast options while a cigarette bleeds smoke absently into the air. His face is tired, the lines around his eyes deeper than usual. Day old stubble gleams silver on his jawline in the morning light. He closes his eyes, and lets out a sigh. 

“Something wrong?” Holden asks. 

“Aside from the fact that I just spent three hours listening to a pedophile rapist and killer monologue about his crimes?” Bill asks, taking a drag of his cigarette. “Yeah. I got maybe four hours of sleep last night. I’m running on fucking fumes.”

“Sorry.” Holden mutters, sinking down against the stiff plastic of the booth seat. 

Bill rubs his eyes, and leans back. “Not your fault.”

Holden sets his menu down, and crosses his arms. There’s a sick knot in the back of his throat, though not entirely because of Beal. 

“I don’t think we can ever let Mary’s parents know the truth.” Holden says. 

Bill deliberately taps his cigarette over the ashtray, his jaw working from side to side. 

“I think it would unnecessarily devastate them.” Holden adds, “Their lives have already been destroyed. Telling them their daughter was running away would just be cruel.”

“I agree.” Bill says, shifting his gaze to the window. The pale blue of his eyes are washed out in the sunlight, glistening and bloodshot from lack of sleep. 

“There won’t be a trial since Beal confessed.” Holden says, “They never have to know.”

“I’m sure they already blame themselves enough.” Bill says, “We’re supposed to protect our children. It’s our only job as parents.” 

Holden purses his lips, and glances away from the grimace on Bill’s face. Undoubtedly, he’s thinking of Brian, the failings of child-rearing, the skewing of good intentions. 

“I don’t think they’re to blame.” He says, quietly. “Children are innocent, illogical. Mary running away was … I don’t think she thought it would do her any harm.”

“Of course not.” Bill says, “I just have to wonder what in her home life was so horrible that it would have pushed her to that point.” 

“I don’t know.” Holden says, “I never thought about running away as a kid.”

“I did.” Bill says, abruptly. He takes a hard drag of his cigarette, and focuses on the dust gathering in the corner of the windowsill as he expels smoke in a slow stream. “And I can tell you it wasn’t because I didn’t get my allowance, or my parents didn’t buy me the right toy for Christmas. It was because-”

Holden swallows hard as the sudden spill of honesty comes to a halt. He peeks up at Bills rigid expression, his jaw hardened as if cut from stone. 

Bill sighs, and shakes his head. “Forget it.”

Silence settles between them until the waitress returns to take their order. Fifteen minutes later they both have breakfast in front of them, plates piled high with hashbrowns, eggs, bacon, and toast. Famished, Holden devours half the food in silence until the ache in his belly eases and his chewing slows. 

Holden glances across the table to see Bill pushing scrambled eggs across the plate with his fork. His head is bent, gaze focused on the fluffy, yellow eggs, but Holden can tell that his mind is distant. He thinks that anger would suit this moment better because three girls are dead, a man is locked away, but it can never bring them back; only Bill doesn’t seem angry, but rather defeated, a veil of exhaustion that Holden isn’t used to seeing, a vulnerability he may never get to sink his fingers into again. 

He leans forward, sliding his hand across the table. Bill’s fingers lie limply against the faded, scratched plastic, and Holden wants to lace his own fingers between them, hold on tightly. 

“I think we’re going to be okay.” He says, quietly, the only reassurance he can offer right now beyond the physical touch he’s yearning for. 

Bill glances up at him, a frown knitting his brow. “What do you mean?”  
“You and me … we’re not anything like Beal.” Holden says, “Or Jones, or Casto. Or any of them.” 

Bill begins to scoff, his gaze diverting toward the window.

“You know I’m right.” Holden says, “Just like I know you would never really hurt me.”

Bill leans back in the booth, snatching his hand out of reach from Holden’s. His eyes cling intensely to Holden’s, speaking a silent defiance that’s slowly crumbling. 

“Maybe it’s even a good thing.” Holden says, “After the night we just had - the last few weeks, actually. Some kind of release, a catharsis.”

“Catharsis?” Bill echoes, his voice cutting around the word.

“Yes.” 

Bill’s mouth purses, and his gaze drops to his lap. But he doesn’t argue, and that’s some small victory Holden thinks. 

They finish their breakfast in silence. Holden pays for the meal, and drives them back to the hotel. In the hallway in front of their separate rooms, Holden can feel the exhaustion of being awake for nearly twenty-four hours beginning to catch up with him. He fumbles to get his keycard in the door, sliding it three times before the lock finally releases. He twists the knob open, but Bill’s voice stops him. 

“Holden?” 

Holden shifts back on his heel, peeking around the corner of the door frame to glimpse Bill lingering in the hall. 

His eyes are soft, a quiet yearning rolling in waves across the few feet of space between them. He looks as if he’s about to say something honest, but his jaw clenches, a curtain of stoicism unfurling over the tenderness in his eyes. 

“Good night.” He says. 

“‘Night, Bill.”

Holden sighs as Bill slips into his room and the door swings shut behind him. He hears the automatic lock click in the silence, and they’re separated again by walls and silence. 

Ducking into his own room, Holden shuffles across the carpet, and falls into bed without taking off his clothes or shoes. Exhaustion weighs him down, and before he can think any more of Bill and the feeling of his hands wrapped around his breathless throat, he’s fallen into a deep, dark sleep. 

~

The bell above the door of the Mini-Mart a gives a warped, tinny chime each time someone enters. At ten o’clock at night, there’s only a few other patrons wandering down the half-stocked aisles, tired eyes appraising the small, overpriced packages of potato chips and candies. The kid manning the cash register is reading a magazine, not paying any mind to the two teens down the aisle from Bill shoving chocolate bars in their pockets. 

Bill shifts his gaze back to the refrigerator where a bottle of Jameson is daring him to get wasted this Saturday evening. He doesn’t have any interest in petty theft, though one flash of his badge would probably send the two scampering. With his haggard appearance and his eyes set on the whiskey, however, such a gesture might reveal more about himself than the two shoplifters. 

Bill sighs, and pulls the door open. He’s getting fucking sick of this routine, but he’s living out of a hotel until the house sells and he doesn’t have anything better to do on the weekends. 

He’d spent last weekend with Brian to make up for missing out during the Decatur case, giving his liver a much needed break. Aside from that relief, the time spent with his son hadn’t provided any other kind of satisfaction that he was looking for. Brian spent most of the time staring aimlessly at the TV or playing solitary games with his toys. If Bill walked into the other room, it was like his son wasn’t there at all. 

He doesn’t meet the cashier’s eyes as he pays for the bottle of whiskey and a pack of cigarettes. He walks across the street to his motel room, and slips inside. The bland walls stare back at him, an ugly backdrop to his loneliness. 

Dropping down to the sheets, he kicks his shoes off, and tucks the bottle against his side. Lighting a cigarette, he leans back against the pillows, and blows a smoke ring at the ceiling. He glances at the telephone. 

Despite his best efforts, he hasn’t passed one night in this hotel since their return from Decatur without thinking of Holden and that night between them. He’s even relived it a few times, hiding under the covers as if the eyes of the world are watching while he touches himself thinking of Holden’s mouth wrapped around his cock. 

Bill startles when the telephone bursts into a shrill ringing. Shoving himself up from the pillows, he grabs the receiver midway through its third ring. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, it’s me.” Holden says. 

Bill frowns.  _ I was just thinking of you.  _ He purses his mouth over the reply. 

“Hi.” He says, “What’s up?”

“Nothing, I … uh, I was just watching TV, and I saw a news report from Alabama.” Holden says, “Beal plead guilty at the arraignment just like we expected.” 

“Good.” Bill says, “The sooner he’s convicted the better.”

“Yeah, it’s a relief he can’t hurt anyone else.” Holden says, “Debbie Marsh’s parents are talking to the press. She’s being hailed a hero by the town.” 

“She’s a survivor, that’s for sure.”

“No one can believe it was a youth pastor.” 

“Everybody has secrets.” Bill says, bracing his elbows against his knees and staring at the matted carpet. 

Silence registers across the line. Bill can hear Holden breathing just above the hum of static. 

“Was there something else?” Bill asks, finally, clearing his throat. 

“No, I guess not.” Holden says. 

Bill adjusts his grip on the receiver as a yearning in his chest niggles with increasing intensity. He closes his eyes against the growing urge, and silently wishes Holden would be the one to instigate it, a dirty repeat of their last phone call. 

“Are you alone?” Holden asks. 

Bill’s eyes spring open to the question that he seems to have conjured from deep inside his own longing mind. 

“Yeah, who else would be here?” Bill asks. 

“I don’t know.” Holden says. 

“Are you?”

“Yes.” 

Silence again, the buzz of tangy anticipation. 

Bill draws in a slow breath, and rubs his eyes.  _ Don’t be fucking stupid.  _

“Do you want me to…?” Holden begins, his voice strained with a choked longing that makes Bill’s insides clench. 

“No.” Bill says, sharply. “Forget it, Holden.”

“Okay, fine.” Holden says, and then adds more quietly, “I’ll just do it alone, then.”

Bill clenches his jaw. “Great. Good for you. I won’t keep you then.”

“Okay.” Holden says. “Goodnight, Bill.”

“Goodnight.” 

Bill hangs up the telephone with a clatter, and stands up with a grunt of frustration. A frisson of irritation collides with the longing writhing warmly in his belly. His hands shake as they curl into fists at his sides, trying to crush down the need with the bite of his nails digging into his palms. 

Behind the clench of his eyelids, he can see Holden’s tired eyes in the morning sunlight of the diner.  _ We’re going to be okay.  _ God, how he wants to believe it, but it feels like everything is collapsing and burning, like he’s never going to get his contented life back again. All he has left is their work - and Holden. The one thing he wants, but shouldn’t have. The one thing he needs to protect, but wants nothing more than to crush.  _ We’re not anything like them.  _ Well, that’s debatable considering he feels like he can’t control this need anymore than Beal claimed he couldn’t control his own deviant lust. 

Biting out a curse, Bill shoves his feet back into his shoes, and swipes his keys from the nightstand. He strides out of the motel room, and crosses the dimly lit parking lot to his car. 

His racing thoughts don’t slow down until he’s driving down the road, three turns away from Holden’s apartment, on the verge of making a decision that could change everything. He could stop right now if he wanted, turn around and drive home, and be the only witness to this shameful lack of self-control. It could all end right here, with his admonition to Holden that he isn’t gay, never has been, never will be. Maybe Holden won’t ever forgive him, but he could live with that - couldn’t he? Maybe. He just can’t live with himself, the thoughts inside his own head. He’d burst into flames if he didn’t let himself go to Holden now. 

Bill presses his foot down harder on the accelerator, carrying him swiftly toward the glassy highrise of Holden’s apartment building. When he pulls up the curb, he throws the car firmly into park. The engine idles quietly beneath him, a steady bassline to the thunder of his pulse. 

The summer air is mild as he gets out of the car, and crosses the street to the front doors of the Essex House. The lobby is deserted. Classical music plays at low volume while the clerk at the desk shuffles through the newspaper. 

He glances up when Bill approaches, procuring a neat smile. 

“Good evening.”

“Hi.” Bill says, “I’m sorry, I don’t live here. I’m trying to visit a friend.”

“I can call up for you.” The clerk says, “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Ford.” Bill says, “Holden Ford.”

“And your name?”

“Bill Tench.”

“Is he expecting you?”

Bill clenches his jaw. “Probably not.”

The clerk nods, looking neither suspicious nor indifferent. He picks up the telephone and dials. 

Bill’s stomach knots while he waits. He’d feel awfully stupid if Holden declined to let him up, but he’s here now, and fleeing the lobby at this point would be even more embarrassing. 

The clerk has a brief conversation with Holden before he puts the phone down. 

“He’ll see you.” He says, waving for Bill to follow him. 

Bill trails behind him to the door that leads to the ground level apartments and the elevator at the end of the hall. The clerk punches in the code that allows the door to open, and he stands aside as Bill passes him, offering a faint ‘good evening’. 

As Bill rides the elevator up to Holden’s floor, his hands itch with sweat and his stomach swarms with a mass of eager butterflies; and he hasn’t felt like this in so long, too long to really remember or reference back to youth. He’s not sure if that means something, if this growing, changing thing between them is real, or maybe that he’s just too horny to think straight - either way, he already left his logic back in his hotel room, and he can’t think past the idea of having Holden’s skin under his hands again, the taste of his mouth, the sound of his moans. 

The elevator doors slide open, and a tremble ripples through him as he steps out onto the carpet. He slowly lifts his head to see the door of Holden’s apartment standing open, his slender figure silhouetted in the yellow light cast from the interior. 

Bill hesitates a moment before walking down the hall to where Holden lingers in the doorway. 

Holden clutches the doorframe with one hand while the other shifts restlessly at his side. His eyes are deep blue in the dim light, watching Bill closely as he shuffles to a stop less than a foot away. He reaches out a tremulous hand to touch Bill’s knuckles with soft fingertips. 

Bill swallows hard, and meets his gaze. 

“I tried not to come.” He whispers, his voice a raspy whisper in the hollow silence of the hall. 

Holden nods, his expression taut with need and not a hint of glee at being proven right. 

Bill pushes his knuckles into the graze of Holden’s palm, absorbing the humming weight of the slight contact for a brief moment before his hand lunges to clutch Holden’s hip. He nudges them back into the apartment, and pushes the door shut behind them. 

Holden whimpers softly as Bill pushes him up against the door, his hand clutching at Holden’s cheek and gradually sliding lower towards his throat. 

Bill leans in close, his breath stammering from his lungs as their noses nudge against one another. Holden tilts his chin up, parting his lips. His tongue darts across his lower lip, leaving it gleaming pink with saliva, enticing. 

Uttering a quiet groan, Bill kisses him fiercely. The taste of Holden’s mouth explodes across his senses, sweet and soft like overripe fruit. His lips are eager and compliant beneath the stroke of Bill’s mouth, sliding open again and again to accept the hot press of Bill’s tongue. His responsiveness sparks racing heat in Bill’s blood, encouraging the swimming need in his belly to evolve into an engulfing flood. 

Bill pulls back abruptly, breathing hard. His hand circles Holden’s throat, containing the swelling gasp of his esophagus, the stampede of his pulse exploding against tender skin. 

Holden gasps as Bill’s grip pins him against the door. He clutches at Bill’s forearm, his face flushing deep pink, veins throbbing wildly against his temples. His eyelids slip open to regard Bill with hazy satisfaction. 

Bill presses his forehead against Holden’s as he eases his grip, trying desperately to stem the trembling desire burning through every inch of him. 

“Fuck.” Bill mutters, pressing his eyes shut. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” Holden whispers, the vibration of his voice humming against Bill’s palm. “I trust you.”

Bill opens his eyes to see Holden looking back at him, his eyes steady yet hungry. 

He releases Holden’s throat, and slides his palm down to his chest where his heart is pounding. “You’re shaking.”

Holden nods, his forehead pushing against Bill’s. He exhales a quiet, shuddering breath.

“So are you.”

Bill curls his fingers around the collar of Holden’s shirt, his knuckles blanching in a vain attempt to stop the trembling taking root in every fiber of his body. 

“This is dangerous.” Bill whispers.  _ It’s dangerous how much I want you.  _

Holden closes his eyes momentarily. “I know, but I don’t care. I just want you, Bill. I want you so much - more than anything.”

Bill draws back, stamping his knuckles into the door beside Holden’s head. 

Holden flinches, his eyes springing open. 

“You can’t fucking say that.” Bill says, his voice strangled with a groan. 

“Why not?” 

“Come on, Holden. Don’t do this.” Bill says, pleading now, but he doesn’t care how pathetic it sounds. “Something like this … it can’t last, it can’t-”

“Why can’t it?” Holden asks, pushing away from the door and against Bill’s chest. “I want it to last.” 

Bill lowers his head as Holden’s arm curls around his waist, drawing him close. Their chests collide slowly, a gentle, burning crash of desire that he can feel stripping away his resistance. 

“Don’t you?” Holden presses, softly. 

Bill swallows hard, searching for a reply. Everything inside of him is screaming  _ yes _ , but the confession is trapped somewhere in his chest, lost in a mass of confusion and fear. 

Holden’s breath is soft on his cheek. “Just stay tonight. Please.”

Bill glances up, and Holden’s eyes capture him just before his mouth does. And he’s fucked; so fucked, like he never had a chance. 

Bill leans into the kiss, reaching up to cradle Holden’s cheek and then his nape, digging his fingers into hair and across his scalp in a desperate bid to get just as close as he can. Their mouths are already intertwined, tongues pushing wet and hungry back and forth, yet it doesn’t feel like enough to fill the gaping hole in his chest, this unfathomable loneliness that has echoed nothing but darkness back at him for months now.

Clutching Holden’s waist, Bill drags them to the couch where they tumble down against the cushions, mouths breaking apart only momentarily in the jostle. Bill grasps Holden’s jaw to pin him to the couch as he settles between his legs, feeling Holden’s knees locking against his hips, ankles winding against the small of his back like some small clinging thing attaching itself to his chest, already a part of him. 

The panting, stroking kiss ends with a gasp as Bill tears his mouth free. He leans his hips down into the cradle of Holden’s groin, watching the pleasure shift across Holden’s face when their clothed erections collide. 

Holden bites back a groan, and lurches up against the pressure. His ankles loosen from around Bill’s waist long enough to allow Bill to strip him out of his trousers and underwear. The lights are on and his skin is bare and visible unlike the shamed, shadowed desperation of the hotel room. Bill extends a trembling hand to touch his swollen cock, finding the flesh velvet soft yet rock hard. 

Holden whines, his back arching from the cushions at the graze of Bill’s fingers. 

Bill’s hand drifts away from his cock to tug at the hem of his t-shirt. 

Holden pulls the shirt off over his head in response to the eager nudging, and tosses the garment over the side of the couch. He sinks back against the cushions, watching Bill with wide, darting eyes and flushed cheeks. 

Bill peruses Holden’s naked body stretched out in front of him, feeling his need stirring deeper, harder, but somewhere deeper in his chest, his shame melting away. When his palm slides across the jagged hitch of Holden’s ribs and against the soft tremble of his belly, it feels right, a key sliding perfectly into a lock, an answer to a question inside of him he’d always been too afraid to ask. 

He pushes past his hesitation as he bends down to smother Holden in yet another kiss; meanwhile, he tugs at the fastenings of his own trousers, eagerly thrusting the fabric out of the way to get his skin up against Holden’s as quickly as he can. 

Holden’s fingers interject with his own, assisting Bill in peeling the thin yet restrictive layer of his boxers away from his aching cock. He kicks the trousers from his ankles, and leans into the touch. A groan rolls from his mouth into Holden’s when their cocks meet, hard flesh rubbing aching friction into one another to the verge of pain. 

Holden gasps as their mouth tumble apart again, and he mutters a breathless plea into the corner of Bill’s mouth. Grabbing onto Bill’s wrist, he guides his hand up against his leaping pulse. 

Bill draws back just far enough to glimpse Holden’s wide-eyed expression of need before he closes his fingers around his throat. 

Holden tilts his head back, uttering a groan that ends with a small, choked noise beneath Bill’s crushing grasp. His back arches, his sides expanding and shuddering with suffocated breaths that ripple down into the tremor contained in the soft plane of his belly. His cock squirms against his quivering stomach, blushing the same deep pink painting its way across Holden’s cheeks. 

Bill spits into his palm, and takes Holden’s throbbing cock in his other hand. He lets up on Holden's throat just long enough to hear him draw in a raspy breath and utter a desperate moan. 

Holden’s hips writhe as Bill strokes him, his fist steady and determined, pushing him quickly to the verge of pleasure. He keeps his other hand fixed around Holden’s throat, watching him blush deep pink and struggle to breathe, watching his chest shudder each time he lets up, watching it constrict every time he clamps down. 

Satisfaction bursts into his bloodstream as Holden’s writhing seizes, his body going stiff for a few breathless, weightless moments before his hips buck under the trigger of orgasm. Bill lets Holden breathe as the climax envelops him, cock jetting thick, milky streams of release against the duress of Bill’s hand, his whole body shuddering with deep spasms of bliss. 

Bill touches him all the way through it, drawing every last shudder and drop from inside him with a squeezing grasp. Holden is shuddering and moaning, hips curling desperately from the coarse touch by the time the orgasm eases and his cock is leaking only remnants of his pleasure. 

Bill releases him, and Holden sinks against the couch, breathing heavily, uttering a quiet groan of satisfaction. His eyelids slip open to meet Bill’s gaze, and he blushes fresh pink as Bill’s sweeping perusal takes in his spilled release and wilting flesh. 

Wrapping his legs around Bill’s waist, Holden pushes himself up from the cushions. He loops an arm around Bill’s neck, and kisses him hungrily on the mouth. 

Bill clutches Holden’s waist. His right hand is wet with cum, smearing across the smooth curve of Holden’s hip. He can feel himself still throbbing with need, the scent of Holden’s release only stirring the arousal deeper in his belly. 

Holden’s mouth slips free of Bill’s, but lingers close, expelling soft, heated breaths across Bill’s cheeks. He reaches down to slide his fingers through the slick mess of cum drenching his belly, gathering enough to counteract friction before taking Bill’s cock in his hand. 

Bill groans as pleasure soars through his chest, the first contact like a cleansing fire that burns away all else but thoughts of bliss. 

“Fuck.” He whispers, clutching at Holden’s nape to drag him closer. 

Holden hums a quiet response as he drags his hand down the shaft, smearing the hard, veined flesh with glistening release. He goes slowly at first, lathering the length of Bill’s cock with the provisional lubricant. As Bill’s groans intensify and his hips thrust up against the touch and the weight of Holden’s body on his lap, Holden shifts into a harder, fast caress. 

Bill presses his eyes shut as the pleasure begins to crest in his chest, a thundering wave that he can’t suppress or see past to the next unraveling second. He clings to Holden’s nape and buries his face in the soft, rippling muscle of his chest as it hits him, hard and fast. He can hear himself gasping, moaning, coming apart, but all he can focus on is the brilliant, seizing spasms gripping deep into the core of his body, the waves of tingles surging through him, the need releasing, soothing the ache of repressed longing. 

When the pleasure melts away and dies, he’s left leaning into Holden’s chest, breathing in desperate, broken gasps; and he feels undone, unbound in every way, but it doesn’t frighten him this time. Holden’s arm is around his shoulders, holding him, and that feels good. He can’t find his anger, or his shame, or his fear. How could he when he isn’t alone any longer, staring at the empty, dispassionate walls of a cheap motel? Holden’s eyes are like the ocean, blue and gentle, so unlike the amber slosh at the bottom of a whiskey bottle; tonight, he wants nothing more than to get lost inside of them. 

~the end~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm [prinxcesskayy](https://prinxcesskayy.tumblr.com//) on Tumblr!  
>  Check out my companion playlist for this fic, [burn me down](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/76ehCVA35sl2d4RXFhft4O//), available on Spotify!


End file.
